


if we go down (we go down together)

by thebitterlesbian



Category: Ghostbusters (2016)
Genre: F/F, i'll probably think of it eventually, i'm sure something else could go here but i'm not really sure what, it's my first time doing this sorry
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-02-15
Updated: 2017-03-22
Packaged: 2018-09-24 16:07:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 12
Words: 28,408
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9769685
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thebitterlesbian/pseuds/thebitterlesbian
Summary: Erin and Holtzmann burn together, then burn out, and Erin runs. Several months later they're forced to interact at a conference. Neither is really sure what could come next.





	1. and it breaks my heart

**Author's Note:**

> Hello all! This is my first venture into fanfiction for any fandom, so I hope you'll all enjoy it and even if you don't please tell me you hate it nicely. This story is told from both Erin and Holtzmann's perspectives with some flashbacks thrown in. I've not had anyone else read this so any errors are my fault, but I tried!

Erin Gilbert pushes the white door open with her shoulder, attempting to stuff the key card into her laptop case while keeping her purse and backpack and suitcase under control. She’s not sure how she always manages to over pack so much for conferences, but here she is, looking more like she’s prepared for a research trip into Antarctica than a glorified extended weekend in Chicago.

With a sigh, she plops down on the bed farthest from the door and takes in her surroundings. It’s a typical hotel room. Two large beds, wonderfully fluffy, with a long nightstand in between them. A TV hangs on the wall opposite, above a desk. There’s a mini-fridge next to the desk and two armchairs in front of the large window. Outside the window, Erin can see the Ferris wheel at Navy Pier in the distance. It makes her wish she’d have more time to explore the city, since Chicago is new to her.

  
Her phone buzzes to her left, and she sees that it’s Abby. She quickly types out a response to her still-friend that she’d landed safely, grateful that the other woman had understood her need to leave this time had been something completely unrelated to them. She’d been upset but forgiven her quickly, still wanting to remain friends with Erin, keeping her updated on their work in exchange for the occasional assistance when the Ghostbusters needed help.

  
A glance at the alarm clock on the nightstand tells her that it’s nearly noon. Her first session isn’t until 5:00 that evening, the opening reception for the conference. She almost rolls her eyes at the thought of having to force herself to interact with her colleagues. Questions about her work as a Ghostbuster have followed her everywhere she’s gone since quietly leaving the group, and she knows this week will be no different. The idea of having to explain that she’s no longer with the team, and coming up with an excuse for why, is already exhausting.

  
Erin moves to begin unpacking her clothes, hanging them on the small closet near the bathroom door. She plugs in her phone charger next to the bed she’d claimed as her own. A half an hour passes and she’s still the only one in the room. She’d opted for a randomly assigned roommate for the conference with the intent of saving some money and, if she was being honest with herself, with the hope of meeting someone to at least talk to during their downtime. Glancing at the clock again, she decides to shower before her roommate arrives.

  
She showers slowly, relishing the heat of the water running over her skin. By the time she’s finished, the bathroom is full of steam and she nudges the door open to let some of it seep out. Erin hopes briefly that whoever she’ll be sharing the room with either holds off for twenty more minutes or at least opens the door slowly, or else she’ll end up with an eyeful of Erin in a towel.

  
But this is life, and life has a way of going exactly opposite of how Erin hopes. No sooner has she stepped back into the bathroom than the door to the hotel room swings open. Her senses are bombarded with familiar stimuli – the voice that used to stop her in her tracks, the scent of perfume that turned her knees to jelly.

  
“ _HELLO, my fabulous fellow physicist!_ ” the other woman lets out with exuberance as she steps across the threshold into the room. “Although, I’m technically an engineer, but I’ve studied physics too, and--”

  
Erin’s eyes are wide with a spectrum of emotions that she couldn’t name in that moment if she tried. She slams the bathroom door shut, spinning on her heel to press her back against it as she sinks to the floor, her palm pressed against her mouth to keep herself from screaming or sobbing or exploding into a thousand tiny pieces.

  
_Jillian Holtzmann._

  
She repeats the name over and over in her head, each repetition feeling like a brand new gash to her heart. Erin doesn’t think the other woman recognized her, but Holtzmann doesn’t knock on the door or make any attempt to communicate, so maybe she did. The events of the past six months descend on her despite her best efforts to keep them at bay. She wraps her arms around herself, biting her lip, trying to calm her bodily instincts to just get as far away from the room as possible. Her chest feels like she’s laying forward on a bed of needles, millions barely-noticeable pinpricks that will make her bleed out before long.

  
Erin isn’t sure how long she sits there, but eventually, her breathing slows. The burning sensations dissipates, leaving her feeling cold and clammy. Before standing, she reaches up to the counter, pulling her phone into her hands. She types out a quick message to Abby about what was going on. Erin doesn’t have the answers herself, but she knows Abby will.

  
She slowly pulls herself up to a standing position in front of the mirror. Her eyes are red now, but she doesn’t remember crying. With shaking hands, she brushes her hair and teeth and splashes cool water on her face. The heat rises up through her torso again as she takes a deep breath and opens the door, stepping into the room.

  
It’s empty.


	2. but i'm okay

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Same events, different perspective!

Jillian Holtzmann dances her way through O’Hare International Airport, knowing she’s running a little late but not really caring too much. She pulls her cell phone from her pocket, shooting a text to Abby and Patty to let them know that she landed safely then summoning a Lyft to take her to the hotel. Shoving her phone back into her pocket, she focuses on the music blasting at what’s probably too high a volume into her ears from her headphones. She lets herself get lost in the song, doing everything in her power to distract herself from the next few days ahead of her.

  
She hates conferences. She hates the rules and the stuffiness, the pretentiousness of those around her. Fitting in was never her forte, the fact of which Holtzmann was well-aware. But this conference had been unavoidable; when the organizer reaches out and contacts you personally, asking you to fill in as the keynote speaker at the last minute, it’s not something you can easily ignore.

  
So she checks in at the fancy hotel’s front desk, taking the key card from the cute receptionist with a smile and a wink. As awful as conferences could be, they could also have their perks – new professional relationships, and short personal ones, too. Both were welcomed by the blonde engineer.

  
She saunters over to the elevator, unplugging the earbuds from her phone and tucking them into her pocket. It’s almost 3:00. She mentally runs through the itinerary for the first day of the conference: meeting with the conference organizer at 4:30, then the dinner and opening reception at 5:00, then her presentation at 6:30, then mingling until she could escape and call Abby before hiding in her bed for the night.

  
Her room is on the 11th floor, and she slowly paces through the hallway. Because of her last-minute reservation, the hotel had run out of single rooms for conference attendees, so she would have to share with another woman. Holtzmann smiles to herself at the thought of it – she’d slept with just about every roommate she’d ever had, whether it was in a situation like this one, back in her days of college dormitories, or any of the short-lived apartments she’d shared with someone else. She certainly isn’t opposed to continuing the trend with this woman.

  
She hears the shower running before she opens the door, but it shuts off as she pulls out her key card, unlocks the door, and steps into the room.

  
“ _HELLO, my fabulous fellow physicist!_ ” she half-yells, determined to make a good – or at least excited – impression on her roommate, assuming the bathroom door still would have been closed from the other woman’s shower. She begins to amend her statement, clarifying: “Although, I’m technically an engineer, but I’ve studied physics too, and--”

  
Holtzmann doesn’t have the statement past her lips before several things begin to happen all at once. She turns towards what she guesses is the bathroom area, seeing that the door was not, in fact, shut. Her eyes, wide with horror at what’s happening, take in the woman standing just inside the bathroom before the door is slammed shut in her face a split second later.

  
But a split second is all she needs for her carefully reconstructed world to come crashing down around her, laying in pieces at her feet.

  
_Erin Gilbert_.

  
The name bounces around her skull on repeat as she turns on her heel and tears from the room, leaving her suitcase abandoned in the entryway. Before she realizes where her feet are taking her she’s back in the lobby, her phone already in her hand, Abby’s number punched into the keypad.

  
“Hey Holtzy, I’m glad you landed alright. What’s the hotel like? Did you meet your roommate?? Is she a stuffy, stuck-up science bitch?” Abby’s voice is full of laughter.

  
Holtzmann is standing outside of the hotel by now, lighting a cigarette. She takes a long drag to clear her head and steady herself before responding.

  
Abby senses something is wrong in her silence, and probes again, quieter this time. “Holtz? Are you okay?”

  
All she can choke out is one word. “Erin.”

  
She hears Abby suck in a sharp breath on the other end of the line. “Oh, Jillian,” she sighs. Where Holtzmann had expected anger to counter her misery, Abby had only concern and what sounded like resignation. The blonde realizes she probably should have anticipated this – after all, Erin had betrayed Abby before, but her most recent departure had been because of Holtzmann, not Erin. Not entirely.  
“I-I-I wasn’t even expecting her to be

here, Abs,” she manages to whisper, her voice weak.

  
“I know, baby, I know,” Abby murmurs. “But do you know what this means for you?”

  
Holtzmann shakes her head before realizing Abby couldn’t see her. Her voice is still soft when she says, “Yeah, I get to have my heart break all weekend.”

  
“No, Holtzmann. You are not going to let her do that to you anymore. You are going to march back into that room and you are going to get ready and you are going to rock your presentation and the rest of the conference. You’re going to show Erin what she’s missing. You’re going to remind her all about what she lost,” Abby finishes and Holtzmann can hear the smile in her triumphant voice.

  
“Sure, Abby,” she agrees, not believing a single word of it. She suddenly regrets calling her friend instead of asking the cute receptionist if there was any way she could have switched rooms, even though she knew there was nothing to be done. “Hey, I gotta go. The reception is in an hour and a half and I still need to get ready.”

  
They say their goodbyes, Holtzmann promising to call later that night, and she presses the end button on the call. She brings the cigarette to her lips for a last drag before dropping the butt and grinding it beneath her heel. Instead of walking back into the hotel, though, she sits heavily down on one of the benches that flanks the doors and pulls out another cigarette.

  
She tries to make herself fall into Abby’s line of thinking – the triumphant, successful ex-girlfriend, showing up the woman who had so easily broken her heart. But by the time her second cigarette has burned down to the filter, all she wants is to talk to Erin. She knows it will probably break her heart, but she wants answers, and closure, and god, all she wants is for the physicist to look her in the eyes again. She makes up her mind, then stands up and walks back into the hotel.

  
Holtzmann punches the button that would take her to the 11th floor. Her heart begins to race again as she repeats the words she wants to say to Erin over and over in her head. She hears one of the adjacent elevators ping as it reached the 11th floor just as the doors to hers opened, then listens to the doors slide shut as she steps out and walks towards her room.

  
Silence greets her as she unlocked the door this time, and the room is cold as she steps through the doorway.

  
It’s empty.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Visit me on Tumblr (anothercaffeinatedlesbian) to love it or hate it!


	3. i forget just why i left you

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This one's a flashback, so I hope it makes sense.

When something between two people has as beautiful and breathtaking of a start as what happened between Erin and Holtzmann, it’s only fitting that it burns out in an equally beautiful, if terrifying and explosive, way.

  
The engineer and the physicist are working late in the lab one night, Erin crunching out equations to help Holtzmann fix her latest invention. At least, they had been, but now they’re standing at opposite ends of Erin’s desk. Their faces are both red as they scream at each other.

  
“Well if it’s _too hard_ for you why don’t you just fucking _run_?” Holtzmann knows it’s a low blow, but the words are out of her mouth before she can stop them, and they keep tumbling past her lips. “Just run, like you always do.”

  
“I’m sorry that I can’t be a perfect lesbian like you, Jillian. I’m sorry that I’m not about to walk down the street screaming that I love sex with women, I’m sorry if that’s a part of my life I want to keep private!” Erin’s face is red as she hurls insults back at her girlfriend. “I’m sorry that there are other parts of me that are more important than who I’m sleeping with!”

  
She can tell by the look on the blonde’s face that she was probably yelling at her soon-to-be ex-girlfriend.

  
“Just because there are other aspects to who I am as a person, doesn’t mean I feel the need to hide this one,” Holtzmann spat back. “I haven’t always been proud of who I am. It took me a long fucking time to get here, you know that. And I’m not going to do that process a disservice by not embracing and loving who I am!”

  
“And I love you for that! I love you for everything you are! I love your pride and your absolute surety in who you are, Jilly,” Erin’s voice cracks and she knows the tears aren’t far behind. “I’m sorry I’m not like that. I’m sorry I’m embarrassed. I grew up being told so many things that I am are wrong that I can’t help but hide them now. I’ve tried, I-I…”

  
Tears, hot and wet, splash over Erin’s lashes and down her cheeks. She swipes them away roughly with her hand.

  
“No, Erin. You haven’t. We’ve been fucking for six months and Abby and Patty don’t even know. You say you love me, but you’re embarrassed. Are you embarrassed that you love a woman, or that you love _me_?”

  
The physicist can’t move, rooted to the spot by the other woman’s casual reference to their relationship over the past six months as _fucking_. Fucking makes Erin think of something raw and uncaring, a focus only on physical pleasure for themselves, no emotions, no feelings, no love.

  
That was never what it was to Erin.

  
To Erin, it was slow and careful, never hesitant, but always an expression of what was threatening to break the dam around her heart and spill out and over her lips. It was soft touches and gentle kisses, each contact lighting her body and soul on fire. It was learning and memorizing and discovering. It was a side of Holtzmann that Erin knew, even then, most women didn’t get to see – it was Holtzmann unsure, Holtzmann nervous, Holtzmann, for once, slow and steady rather than racing to the finish line. It was Erin pouring everything back into her lover, for once touched in a way that reduced her to each of her separate parts while simultaneously making her more than the sum of those parts.

  
It was tears after the first time. Tears of joy and love and happiness and comfort, leaking slow from the corner of her eye as she stared at the woman in her arms.

  
You don’t cry after you _fuck_ someone for the first time. _Fucking_ doesn’t mean feelings. They didn’t fuck; they made love.

  
Holtzmann interprets Erin’s painful pause over her choice of words as the very worst thing someone could ever say to her – that she was embarrassed of being with Holtzmann, was embarrassed _of_ Holtzmann.

  
Erin wanted to stay in the closet not so people wouldn’t know she was with a woman, but so that people wouldn’t know she was with her. She’s too loud, too bright, too eccentric, just _too much_. She always has been.

  
The engineer can feel her heart breaking as she takes a breath. Her throat is constricted and her words sound tight as they fall past her lips. “Just go, Erin. Just fucking leave. I don’t want you anymore.”

  
The physicist turns and runs from the lab, tearing up the stairs, shoving the meager possessions she’d moved into the firehouse when she’d started sleeping with Holtzmann into a bag. It’s less than five minutes until she’s slamming the door to the firehouse open and racing into the cool New York night air.

  
Tears are flowing freely down her cheeks now, blurring the traffic lights and neon signs of the city. She doesn’t know where she’s going or why. All she knows is that she couldn’t stay at the firehouse, and with a sinking heart, realizes she’ll probably never be able to go back.

  
All she’d been to Holtzmann was a fuck, another notch in her bedpost, albeit one she kept around for a few months for convenience. How had Erin missed that the feelings that absolutely flooded her heart every time the engineer was in the room were so completely one-sided? She feels her heart break in that moment, feeling like shards of ice were slipping through her veins.

  
Back in the lab, Holtzmann has collapsed to the floor, her head in her hands, sobs shaking her body in a way she hasn’t experienced since she was a little girl, stung by a bee for the first time.

Her grandfather had told her then that all pain, no matter how much it hurt, was sort of fleeting – it wouldn’t hurt so bad, with time.

  
She thinks this may be the one exception to her grandfather’s rule.

  
The woman she had spent months opening up to, falling in love with, was embarrassed to be with her. Not with a woman, but with one woman specifically. Everything Holtzmann had done to help her – introducing her to other gay people, other gay women, other gay women _in science_ like Erin had been so utterly concerned about – was for nothing.

  
Holtzmann once felt like Erin replaced the blood in her veins with galaxies and the air in her lungs with sunlight, but now, she’s taken the warmth and light out of the engineer, and Holtzmann isn’t sure she’ll ever get it back.


	4. they'll say you could do anything

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Erin makes a decision to try to talk to Holtzmann, but isn't expecting to see the blonde up on stage in front of her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi everyone! Thanks for coming back to read part two and thank you for the kudos and comments on the last section! Y'all made my day! These chapters are longer than the last, so many thanks if you stick through it and let me know what you think at the end!

Erin dries off quickly, not wanting to spend any more time in the room than she has to. The emptiness is eerie now, almost a reminder of how dissatisfying her life had been over the few months leading up to the conference.

 

Thanking her overzealous preparation which meant a suitcase packed with clothes in the order she needed to wear them, complete with an itemized list of the case’s contents, she pulls out her preplanned outfit for the night – a navy dress – and slips into it. She tosses mascara and eyeliner into her handbag before grabbing her heels in one hand and cellphone in the other. Abby’s name lights up the screen and she presses the phone to her ear as she exits the bedroom and turns towards the elevator.

 

“Hey, Abby.”

 

“Erin?” Abby’s voice crackles into her ear as she jabs the elevator’s down button repeatedly. “Um…how’s the conference?”

 

She bites her bottom lip before answering, pausing to inhale sharply through her nose. “Holtzmann is my roommate.” She hates the waver she can hear in her own voice.

 

“Yeah…I know. She just called me,” Abby’s voice is soft and reserved, and Erin can tell she’s unsure of what to do next too.

 

“And the rooms are all booked, I’ve gotten so many emails about it, and I can’t leave, and I don’t know what to do,” Erin says as the elevator door in front of her slides open. A quick step puts her in the car and she’s pressing the button for the door to close immediately, hating how slowly everything seems to be moving.

 

Abby starts to respond but Erin loses the call, groaning in frustration at her phone. She leans against the side of the elevator as it starts to descend, hearing the car in the elevator shaft next to her ascending then coming to a stop with a beep.

 

The lobby is crammed with scientists when Erin steps off of the elevator. She drops her shoes, still in her hand, to the floor, slipping her feet into them. Scanning the lobby for anyone who might recognize her, she drops her head and makes a beeline for the front doors.

 

Once outside, she redials Abby’s number. The other woman answers, Erin apologizing for dropping the first call.

 

“I don’t know what to do, Abby. I saw her standing there and it was like my whole world shattered again,” Erin’s voice is tearful again and she’s grateful she didn’t have time to apply any makeup before she ran away.

 

“Did you say anything to her?” Abby asked, even though she already knew the answer.

 

“No…” Erin says quietly. “I…I slammed the door in her face.” As soon as the door had shut Erin had known it was a mistake, somewhere in the back of her hazy mind, but she had been more concerned with keeping her body from crumbling to really recognize what she was doing. “I shouldn’t have done that.”

 

“Oh, Erin,” Abby sighs across the line. “What are you really expecting to happen?”

 

The question was not something Erin had ever expected to hear. She didn’t know. She wasn’t proud of the fact that she’d run away, but there was nothing she could do to change the situation now.

 

“It doesn’t matter what I want, Abs. I’ll never have that again.” The ground at Erin’s feet swims as tears threaten, yet again, to fill her eyes. Erin knew that Abby knew what she meant, because Abby had been the first person she’d called after her fight with Holtzmann, and she’d told her everything.

 

“All I can say is let her make the first move. Don’t corner her. She’ll shut down but just…let her come to you,” Abby’s voice pleads. “It’s what I’ve been hoping she’d do.”

 

“Wait. You _knew_ she was going to be here? And you didn’t warn me??” Erin tries to sound angry, but her words come out dejected.

 

“Of course I knew, Patty and I practically had to push her onto the plane to get there!” Abby sounds defensive now. “And I didn’t warn you because it wasn’t my place. We aren’t a team now, Erin. I’m friends with you and I’m friends with her but…that doesn’t really overlap anymore.”

 

Erin knows this, of course, and it’s mostly anger at herself that makes her upset.  She sighs before responding.

 

“Yeah, I know, Abs,” Erin says. She checks her watch. It’s almost 4:15. “I should go, though. I still have to finish getting ready. I kind of ran out of the room as soon as I was clothed enough. Thanks for being there, Abby.”

 

“Of course, Erin. And Erin, let her make the first move, but…if she does try to talk to you, just…please give it a chance. I don’t know how anything would turn out, but…” Abby’s voice fades off, but Erin can hear the potential outcomes after the but – _but you both need explanations_ ; _but you need to communicate_ ; _but it could be the happiest ending ever written_ ; _but you’ll never know until you try_.

 

Erin says her goodbyes and hangs up, zipping her phone back into her handbag. She walks slowly back into the crowded hotel, doing her best to slip past the other bodies in search of somewhere quiet to think.

 

She takes a staircase up to the second floor, which she knew from the information given to her when she checked in held a number of large conference rooms as well as a few smaller meeting areas. Her wishes are granted and she finds an empty bathroom.

 

It’s silent around her as she gazes at her reflection, still fighting to keep the tears from splashing down onto her cheeks.  Both the thought of talking to the blonde and the thought of avoiding her until the conference is over send her emotions into a tailspin. Her joints turn to jelly and her stomach does an uncomfortable interpretation of the Macarena at the thought of facing Holtzmann and having a conversation about anything with her; the air seeps from her lungs and her heart squeezes and she feels like her body is on fire at the thought of avoiding her for the rest of the conference and potentially never seeing her again afterwards.

 

Erin’s mind continues its internal battle as she slowly drags eyeliner across her lids, then swipes on mascara. She knows that she’ll go back and forth on the issue until actually confronted with Holtzmann, and at that point, it’ll be entirely up to her fight or flight instincts – no amount of preparation could prepare her for coming face-to-face with the most significant figure in her life.

 

Feeling that, at the very least, her appearance was as good as it was going to get, Erin hurriedly repacks her handbag and makes her way to the main hall, where she’d watch the keynote speaker then be herded into another room for a semi-fancy dinner. Just like any other conference, but without a friend to make it less awkward.

 

She finds a seat at the back of the hall. The room is still dim. Without a feed, the projectors are simply in standby, and the screens at the front of the room cast a blueish tinge over everything.

 

Lazily, Erin flips through the program she’d picked up on her way into the room. She half-pays attention to it as she scans it for any other names she could recognize, but before too long the seats around her started filling and the organizer of the conference was welcoming them all and thanking them for coming together for the purpose of the advancement of science and strengthening the sisterly bond between women scientists. Erin is almost ready to let her mind wander when she hears something familiar that makes her ears sting, but she doesn’t quite make out what it is. Her eyes focus on the front of the room for the first time, watching the organizer step aside to welcome the keynote to the stage. From what Erin remembered, it was supposed to be some medical doctor who had invented some new life-saving machine or something.

 

Except the small, blonde woman bouncing across the stage was certainly not a medical doctor. A gasp escapes her lips before she can stop it. Erin feels her heart thudding through her chest as her vision magnifies Holtzmann in her mind’s eye. The other woman’s confidence skyrockets with each step, her grin widening as she’s met with applause. Every movement squeezes Erin’s lungs.

 

Barely managing to contain a second gasp, Erin shoots up and slides past the woman next to her into the aisle. She half-walks, half-runs towards the door, bag and program clutched in one hand, the other over her chest.

 

The lobby is bright compared to the dim conference hall. Erin passes a small sob off as the beginning of a coughing fit, but she ducks into the first bathroom she sees, slamming the stall door shut and leaning back against it.

 

Would seeing Holtzmann – Jillian – ever stop turning her into a sobbing, emotional mess?

 

Erin stands in the stall for a few minutes before the tears and racing heart slow. She stands up and glances at the program, still clenched in her fingers.

 

It’s there, on the sixth page in.

 

_Jillian Holtzmann, Engineer, Experimental Particle Physics, Ghostbuster_. Erin’s eyes scan the page over and over. She’s wondering how she could have missed something like this when she notices what the other woman is presenting. It’s a sleeker, more improved version of their first portable microcontainment unit, barely the size of a cell phone but powerful enough to hold a Class V entity for up to a week. The prototype had been one Erin had helped her build.

 

She leaves the hotel before going back to her room. She walks to the CVS on the corner and picks out a bottle of wine. She doesn’t plan to get drunk, not quite, but was already starting to worry she’d lose her nerve before ever talking to Holtzmann.

 

An hour later Erin is sitting in the luxuriously soft hotel bed, her hand wrapped around a plastic wine glass, full for the third time. She’s flipping through the channels on the TV, waiting for something to catch her attention.

 

An hour after that, Erin has given up on the wine glass and is sipping the last glass of wine straight from the bottle. Like every time she’s been drunk since the night she ran out of the firehouse, her mind wanders to texting Holtzmann, even though she’s sure the other woman has blocked her number by now. She’s gotten better at not calling Abby instead, because she’d made her position in their feud known, and she had stopped calling Patty after a particularly bad night where Erin had accidentally called her in the middle of a ‘damn fine date, thank you very much!’

 

Erin reaches towards the nightstand for her phone. Her fingers stop, hovering just over the small rectangle. She knows the keynote speech and the dinner were over, and that if Holtzmann was coming back for the night, she would have been back by now.

 

Erin’s mind hones in on the two-letter word: _if_. The thought hadn’t even crossed her mind until that moment – Holtzmann wouldn’t be coming back that night, not if she was anything like the Holtzmann Erin remembered, from before…before her.

 

There are no tears with this realization. Just a sinking feeling, like her chest was slowly collapsing in on itself. Of course Holtzmann would use something like a conference to sleep with another woman. It wasn’t a bad thing, it just…was how things were. Erin would never be that person again, the one who got to be shaken awake by Holtzmann as she crawled in from the lab in the small hours of the morning, who woke up shivering because Holtzmann liked to wrap herself into a human burrito, who got to run her fingers over the soft skin of the blonde’s hip as she drifted off to sleep.

 

The thought of waiting up to talk to the blonde pushed far from her mind, Erin downs the last of the wine in two swigs. Dropping the bottle into the trashcan near the desk, she makes her way into the bathroom to brush her teeth and set out her things for the next morning.

 

The wine makes the room spin once she’s laying back against the pillows, but she just sinks in deeper, closing her eyes. The room is surprisingly dark and Erin finds it almost peaceful. She sets an alarm on her phone for the next morning before closing her eyes.

 

Most nights, Erin sheds at least one or two tears. She’s calmed down a lot with time, no longer falling into hysterical sobs that wracked her whole body and left her bed shaking on more than one occasion. Most nights now it’s just a few silent tears, with maybe a sob.

 

Tonight it’s the quiet kind, that washes over her in heavy waves. The pillow has a wet stain where her tears have fallen onto it. She pulls her legs up to her chest, wrapping her arms around her knees and curling into herself.

 

The last thought she has before she drifts off to sleep is that Holtzmann had been absolutely beautiful on that stage.


	5. while i'm wasted with someone else

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Holtzmann panics before her presentation, then watches Erin leave her all over again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading, and hope you enjoy this one!

Holtzmann pulls her clothes on mechanically, not really paying any attention to what she was doing. She’d been so ready to talk to Erin, and felt the disappointment etched on her face as she moved through the empty room. Some part of her felt like Erin had just been standing there.

She takes a long look at herself in the mirror. Her Abby-approved Professional Person Outfit was a slim-fitting gray suit with a light purple shirt underneath and a regular-sized bowtie perched at her neck. She had to admit, she looked good, with her signature yellow goggles sticking out of her usual misleadingly difficult bun.

Pulling her laptop from her backpack, Holtzmann quickly skims over her presentation once more before standing up and pacing around the room. She begins to panic, wondering why she’d let her teammates talk her into this.

Abby had been understanding, not expecting the blonde to show even the slightest interest in presenting her machines to a room full of stuffy academics. Patty, on the other hand, had been almost adamant that Holtzmann attend the conference, pointing out that it was one of the best ways to get their name and work out to a bigger audience.

Now, as she wears a track in the carpeted hotel floor, Holtzmann thinks she could probably strangle Patty.

All she wants is Erin. The physicist had been able to calm the engineer in a way no one else had ever been able to do. For as much as most people thought love meant a light, fluttery, energy that filled a body with electricity and let them soar to the clouds, for Holtzmann, it was a calm, heavy weight in her chest. Erin kept her grounded, no matter what was running through her mind. A big bust, a machine that was stumping her, feelings, anything, all Holtzmann had to do was look at Erin and she could center and focus herself.

But Holtzmann knows that Erin is gone, and that thinking of her will only make the heat creeping up her entire body even worse. She squeezes her eyes shut and wills her breathing to slow. Stretching her hands above her head, she jiggles her arms and legs out, like she’s trying to shake the nerves out of her fingers and toes.

Slowly, her eyes open. She knows she needs to be downstairs within a few minutes, but she can’t find the enthusiasm to shuffle her feet towards the door. Instead, she sinks into the bed that doesn’t have Erin’s things on it, resting her elbows on her knees and her head in her hands. She mentally catalogs the things that she can feel around her, reminders that she’s real and solid and sitting in a hotel room, not off floating somewhere in space.

Again, Holtzmann makes a note to strangle Patty when she returns to New York.

She stays on the bed as long as she thinks she can, then slowly stands up. Her hands are still trembling as she digs through her bag for a hard copy of her presentation notes. The paper shakes audibly as she straightens up. She knows public speaking (or serious speaking of any kind, really) has never been her forte, and the fact that the reputation of her team – her family – was depending on the outcome of this speech makes her even more nervous.

In a strange way, though, it gives her an odd confidence that she doesn’t think she would have if she weren’t speaking on behalf of something much larger than herself. She grits her teeth as she exits the room, the strap to her bag of equipment slung securely over a shoulder. The ten yards of hallway between her door and the small alcove where the elevators stop seems to stretch on for miles. Only a few seconds pass before she’s pressing the button to call the elevator to her floor, but by the time she’s stepping into the car and pressing the lobby button, her nerves have calmed down to a subtle quaking in her stomach. Even her limbs are steady as she steps out of the elevator.

The main floor of the hotel is still pretty full, scientists milling around, trying to find their colleagues and friends before the presentation started. Holtzmann turns in the direction of the hall where her presentation will be, carefully making each move to avoid bumping into shoulders and stepping on feet.

Her nerves threaten to cripple her again as soon as she steps into the dimly-lit room. She blinks, adjusting to the light and taking in the room around her, from the sea of chairs to the almost-tacky conference logo on the big screen. The word ‘science,’ written in bold, black letters, stands out against a red background, but the ‘I’ is replaced with an image of a bright purple female symbol with an atom in the middle of the circle. Holtzmann begrudgingly admits that it fits, given the conference was for women in science.

The stage just seems so far away and there are so many chairs and that means so many eyes watching her and so many ears listening and she just doesn’t want any of that. She can feel her reactions, takes notice of her heart and breathing increase, feels the shaking start in her chest and spread to her shoulders then down her arms. The organizer is standing at the front of the room and waves at Holtzmann when she realizes she’s in the room.

Holtzmann grounds herself again, seeking the calm she’d felt in the elevator. She knows she has to be calm and steady as she sets up for her presentation. The device she was asked to demonstrate, a portable containment unit, could be testy, and the last thing she wants is for the demonstration to go awry.

She arrives at the front of the room after what seems like an eternity. Each step had pushed a new horrible outcome to the front of her mind, and she can barely focus as the organizer and her committee introduce themselves. There are five other scientists on the stage with her, all awaiting her instruction.

She opens the bag, pulling out five proton guns and then the mobile microcontainment unit. She sets the last piece of equipment on the table in the middle of the stage, then hands one of the guns to each of the other women standing there. It’s finally time to talk science, not feelings, and Holtzmann lets herself fall into relaxed familiarity with the subject matter as she briefs the other women on how to handle their new weapons and the process of what’s about to happen.

While the focus of her presentation is the engineering, not the paranormal, the only way for Holtzmann to really demonstrate her work is to actually capture a ghost in it. The containment unit was already housing a particularly nasty entity her team had captured a few days before that she’d transferred to the unit just before she left. Due to the intensity of this particular ghost’s attacks, it had been a less-than-ideal subject, but busts had been rare in the weeks leading up to the conference, and it was all they’d had. The microcontainment unit had stood up to slightly weaker ghosts for much longer periods of time, but they couldn’t be entirely positive about the more intense entity. Holtzmann was confident. Mostly. The crash course on busting she explains to the other women is briefer than she’d normally be comfortable with, but trusts they understand the situation at hand.

To her own surprise, Holtzmann is nearly completely calmed down by the time she notices the room filling around her. It’s almost 5:00, and she steps off-stage to get a water bottle as the organizer begins her welcome speech. She finds herself scanning the audience out of the corner of her eye, a part of her hoping to catch a glimpse of Erin sitting in the first few rows, eyes as wide as they used to get when Holtzmann was explaining one of her new inventions.

She can’t find the object of her search, though, and thinks it might be for the best as she hears the organizer say her name and give a small overview of her work. Taking that as her signal, she steps back into the spotlights shining down on the stage. Her eyes water for a moment, but she quickly adjusts and bounds across the stage, all traces of nervousness from earlier replaced with her usual excited energy.

The applause dies down and the hall is silent as Holtzmann approaches the podium, and she gazes out over the heads staring back at her. Someone gasps loudly at the back of the room and it draws Holtzmann’s attention. Someone stands up in a small pool of yellow light in the back row, attracting her gaze for just a moment before she recognizes the walk of the woman as she made for the exit.

It’s Erin. Leaving her presentation. Leaving her. Again.

She falters for half a second, her breath stuttering out roughly. She shakes it from her mind and focuses on the science. It’s a coping mechanism. She lets the information roll directly from her brain to her lips, flowing out into the microphone in front of her.

She’s half a beat behind all night. She manages to play it off well for the audience, but she can feel it in her own movements. The only time it proves challenging is as she’s resecuring the unit after the ghost has been recontained, when her fingers glance over the latch instead of locking it down. She catches her mistake the split second it’s made and she fixes it, but she still fears it may have been too late.

The color hasn’t quite returned to her cheeks by the end of the speech, but she manages to act as if nothing’s wrong as she waves to the audience and thanks them for their time. Back down off the stage, she’s a nervous wreck again, but she can’t tell if it’s from the adrenaline leaving her body or the half-moment mistake or seeing Erin leave again.

The memory of the woman’s retreating back sends knives through her heart again. She’s shuffling through a set of doors into a more brightly-lit room filled with small circular tables and lined with longer tables, spread with some food and drinks. She hadn’t even realized her feet were moving.

She calms down with the warmth of the room, eventually sipping on glasses of wine to help relax her nerves. The combination of the alcohol and the emotionally draining roller coaster of a day have her feeling light and airy, and she floats through the room with a softness she didn’t know she had.

She’s had more than a few glasses of wine and is deep into conversation with a young professor at a college on the West coast when she notices the light fingers on her arm, traveling from the inside of her wrist to her elbow. The other woman laughs, leaning into it, and Holtzmann notices the way the light catches her brown hair, tinted with red. Her smile is wide, the lights from the ceiling reflected from their surface.

Holtzmann plays into it, flirting back as heavily as the young professor gave it to her. She’s warm and tingly from the alcohol, not quite drunk but happily buzzed, the world a little soft around the edges. The dark-haired woman laughs and it dances over Holtzmann’s skin like electricity.

The whispered invitation to spend the night slips over her ear and sends a shiver through her stomach. She agrees quickly, making a joke about having to share a room with a woman she didn’t know.

“You mean they don’t provide a single bedroom for the keynote speaker?” The woman laughs, referencing the subject of many of their jokes from throughout the evening. She stands up and offers her hand to Holtzmann, who takes it slowly, pulling herself up.

The other woman’s skin doesn’t feel as warm as Holtzmann is used to as they lay side-by-side a number of hours later, after they’ve kissed and touched and bent and opened throughout the night. Holtzmann finds a strange ring to the way her name sounds as it crashes from the other woman’s lips, and that the other woman’s name doesn’t taste quite right either. It bothers her more than she thinks it should have. She feels and is felt, skin blazing trails over skin, teeth and lips leaving marks for the morning. Fingers rake along her skin, leaving angry red marks, which she returns in kind.

She can’t get Erin out of her mind. The wine has since worn off, leaving her with the slightest of dull aches at the base of her skull. Her eyes drift close, which just amplifies Erin’s image in her mind’s eye.

Before Erin, Holtzmann never cared if she finished, because most of her partners didn’t care if she finished. Erin had taken time to get to know every inch of her, slowly and with certainty, memorizing every dip and curve.

That’s not the case tonight and Holtzmann listens as the other woman drifts off to sleep, leaving the blonde frustrated in more ways than one. But she continues to lightly trace her fingertips up and down the other woman’s arm in front of her, thinking of everything and nothing all at once. She wills herself to fall asleep, remembering her hectic schedule for the next day. Groaning to herself she scoots towards the edge of the bed and turns over, grabbing her cell phone.

She sets her alarms for the next morning, then types out a self-hating text to Abby, admitting to what she’d just done. She needed her best friend’s advice and there was no point in dancing around the night’s events. Her phone shut off with a press of her thumb, thrusting her into a sudden darkness.

Forcing her breathing to a slow pace, Holtzmann shuts her eyes and tries to count ghosts (like counting sheep, only…with ghosts). Time seeps slowly past her, but eventually she’s calm enough to drift to sleep. Like every night, the hazy half-asleep period brings scenes of Erin, and the last thing she sees before she drifts off to sleep is Erin’s back as she left Holtzmann standing on that stage.


	6. we'll get away with everything

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The days following the fallout and breakup.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hope you like it!

Erin wakes up slowly for the next few mornings, spending the last few minutes between sleeping and waking forgetting about the way her heart was painfully stitching itself back together.  It isn’t until her eyes open to the light that she feels the weight of what’s happened in her soul.

 

She can’t put her finger on what made Holtzmann so different to her. What it had been about the other woman that had opened her in a way so different than anyone had tried to open her before. It was like the engineer had poured herself into Erin, filling the small cracks in her being along the way.

 

When Erin ripped herself away she’d left even bigger fissures behind and that’s what Erin feels when she opens her eyes. She braces for another day of getting ready to leave the city.

 

That’s what she decides to do the first night, when she realizes she couldn’t go back to the firehouse. She knows Abby and Patty will be on Holtzmann’s side, and she can’t blame them, but she also can’t tell them why they’re a little wrong, too. That would mean admitting everything, and she can’t bring herself to do that yet, not when things with Holtzmann would never be fixed anyway. Getting away was the only way to keep herself from breaking completely.

 

She finds a research position at an institute in Pennsylvania that accepts her quickly, and makes plans to move within two weeks. Her heart breaks a little more with each check of an item off her list, but she packs each piece away with the rest of her life and moves on to the next box.

 

The night before she leaves, she shatters along the fault lines left by the abrupt absence of the blonde from her life. She falls to pieces, sobs shaking her body as she lays in a ball on the couch, grasping at her own edges to keep herself together.

 

In a moment of blind panic, she pulls up Holtzmann’s contact on her phone, pressing her thumb to the green call button before even realizing what she was doing.

 

She focuses on the ringing sound in her ear, then forces her breathing to slow, getting her sobs under control. The line rings and rings, the sound grating at her eardrums. When the mechanical voicemail message starts, Erin groans softly and hangs up the phone.

 

Slowly, doing her best to remain calm but unable to stop the tears flowing down her cheeks, Erin readies herself for bed, setting out her clothes for the next day. She finally lays in bed half an hour later, pulling the covers up to her chin. She eventually falls into an uneasy sleep, passing through the night tossing and turning.

 

The morning comes too soon, and she wakes up slowly again, opening herself along the cracks that she knows will never be filled properly again, because the woman who fit so perfectly was gone forever.

 

***

Holtzmann is numb for the next two hundred hours. She can’t bring herself to pass time in days anymore. It’s too long. She lives hour to hour, heartbeat thudding into heartbeat, moment passing into moment. She sleeps more than usual; it’s a little less painful when she’s asleep, when she’s not dreaming.

 

Abby is the first to notice something’s up, the morning after it happens. She knew Erin had called in sick that day because she’d heard Abby and Patty talking about it downstairs. The information weights Holtzmann down even more.

 

Her movements are slow when Abby walks into the lab. She knows, and Abby notices.

 

“Holtz? You okay?” Abby’s voice is full of concern.

 

“Yeah, Abs, just not feeling my best today. A bit of a headache,” Holtz makes a vague gesture towards her head as she speaks. She throws in a small, pitiful smile for good measure.

 

Abby buys it, but barely. “Okay, Holtz. We’re downstairs if you need anything. And for god’s sake, _please_ no poofs today, we’re down to one fire extinguisher and I’d really rather not run out,” she adds with a chuckle.

 

Holtzmann laughs, the sound a little too sharp in her ears. Nevertheless, she agrees, promising she was working with stable materials for the day. It was only a little bit of a lie.

 

Abby turns towards the door, walking towards the stairs when she paused and turned around, a thoughtful look overtaking her face. “I hope you’re not catching what Erin has, it sounds nasty,” she muttered before she turned around again.

 

Tears spring to Holtzmann’s eyes as she sees the glaring irony in the statement. Holtzmann’s heart was the one breaking, not Erin’s, because Erin had been the one who left.

 

She moves a little more normally with each day that passes, eventually falling back into her old rhythm within a few weeks. The news that Erin had left had almost torn her world in two, but stronger when she recovered from the shock. She had adjusted to life without the physicist, and so had Abby and Patty. They operated with three now, and Holtz operated in her life on her own.

 

There were more than a few girls over the next few weeks, all after long nights and many bottles passing in front of her. There was always regret in the morning, speckled over her skin in the bruises and teeth marks that had popped up overnight.

 

There were good nights, the nights where there wasn’t even a night because she worked straight through until the morning, then passed out on the couch in the back of her lab at 7. There were the okay nights, the ones where the heaviness in her heart woke her up, but didn’t keep her awake in the darkness for too long. There were the nights with other women, which ranked somewhere between okay and bad.

 

The bad nights were the ones where she shook herself to sleep, not even trying to keep the rolling sobs in her chest at bay. Where she cries herself to the point of exhaustion, barely able to reach out to set her alarm for the next morning.

 

But her days are okay, no matter how bad the night before is. She throws herself into inventing, having to do more guesswork than ever without the immense help of a genius physicist ten feet away from her. It’s mentally stimulating and she revels in it, loving the challenge. It helps her get through.

 

She keeps away from the alcohol for a while, knowing that it would be all too easy for her to fall into its grip.

 

Until the night Erin calls her, pulling her from exhaustion after shaking for hours, and it reopens every half-healed wound in her chest. The pain comes rushing back, knocking the air from her lungs. She drops the phone like it burned her hand, then falls back into her bed, finally welcoming her uneasy sleep with open arms.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm on Tumblr at thecaffeinatedlesbian, so come let me know there if you liked it or hated it, or if you'd like to see more! Thank you for reading! :D


	7. i don't know if it's fair

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In the span of a day, Erin battles a hangover, runs into Holtzmann, accepts an invitation to dinner, and feels more scared than she has since leaving the team.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for your patience on this section! The chapters are way longer than the last couple sections, and grad school hit me full-force this week and I had to be a student first. But thanks for sticking with it and I hope you enjoy!

Erin is jerked awake by her alarm after what feels like only a few minutes of sleep. The harsh sound is chased immediately by all the warning signs of a hangover. Her tongue is a sponge in her mouth and her head feels like it’s been replaced with cement. She regrets opening her eyes as soon as she does it, the action sending her world spinning and sending a wave of nausea through her. There’s pounding all over her brain, from the base of her skull to right behind her eyes.

She stays lying in bed for a while, taking in the sheer intensity of the hangover that’s battering at all parts of her body. The combination of travel, dehydration, and pure emotions from the day before had left her exhausted. The addition of a bottle of wine into the mix had utterly flattened her. She knows she’ll miss the first session, but she can’t bring herself to care about it as she tries to keep whatever was inside of her stomach from making an appearance.

She slowly sits up and makes her way to the bathroom, hoping a shower will wash away her hangover. Her movements are deliberate as she fights off the urge to throw up, her stomach contents winning out eventually and forcing her to sink to her knees next to the toilet.

She makes a swearing promise to herself that she’d never drink again, knowing full well she’d break that one sooner rather than later. It was a promise she’d made countless times since the night she ran out, and one that was broken just as often.

Somehow, Erin finds the strength to put herself together for the day, sipping on the bottle of water she’d thought to grab at CVS the night before. She easily locates a bottle of ibuprofen, once again thanking herself for packing so much before popping three of the small red pills into her mouth.

She glances at the clock on the nightstand. It’s just past 8:30 AM, and the she remembers that the first session will be starting any second. Sessions run for an hour and a half at a time, with a half hour break in between so the women could get from room to room. She’s scheduled to present in the third session, the one after a longer break for lunch. It won’t start until almost 2:00. 

Her gaze shifts from the clock and lingers on the seemingly still-untouched bed a few feet from hers. She tries to block thoughts of the other woman from her head, but memories slip through the cracks.

She remembers the way Holtzmann had joked about wanting to experience sex in a hotel bed, because they were always so much softer and fluffier than regular beds that regular people owned.

“It’s practically a scientifically-proven fact, Er,” the engineer had insisted, a silly smile making its way across her face. “Hotel sex is something to strive for.”

Like always, Erin had laughed, but catalogued the little bit of information about the other woman, tucking it away with the other seemingly-useless things she found out, hoping she’d get to make use of it someday.

She flashes forward to another memory, this one colored a little differently, darker around the edges as nighttime set in around the four women who’d once made up the Ghostbusters team. It had been a late call for a bust a few hours away, and the sun was already setting when they arrived at the old church.

The bust had taken more out of them than usual, and they decided to get a hotel room for the night. Erin subtly ensured she’d be staying in the same room as Holtzmann, citing both Abby and Patty’s tendency to snore as reasoning for wanting to room with the blonde.

Her reasonably well-thought out plan backfired, as the tiredness in both of the women’s bodies didn’t let them do much more than crawl into bed after a shower.

It’s not until a few hours later that she’s brought back to consciousness by light kisses being planted down her stomach and up her thighs, and she experiences the truth in Holtzmann’s claims that hotel bed sex really is something to strive for.

She stays in her own memories for a little while longer, feeling a bittersweet sting as she experienced the happiness of those moments all over again before pulling herself back to the lonely hotel room in Chicago. She’s entirely too aware of the fact that Holtzmann would have to return to the room to get changed and ready for the day, but has no idea when that will be. A part of her plays with the idea of waiting for the other woman to return and talking to her then, like she’d planned to do the night before, but she doesn’t think her body can handle the hangover from hell that’s still ravaging her body and making her head spin along with the intoxicating presence of the blonde. 

Erin picks up her backpack from next to the bed. She puts the bottle of ibuprofen and the water bottle into it, along with her things for her presentation, sending out a short wish that she’ll be better suited to function in front of humans before the third session.

Erin sighs, resigning herself to the fact that the time for mingling is upon her. She shifts her bag into a more comfortable position on her back, slipping a second arm through its strap. Her phone reads 9:17 before she finally makes her way from her room, already buried in Yelp reviews on local coffee shops in search of her morning fix, knowing that some caffeine might help the hammering in her skull.

The hallway is silent as she tugs the door shut with a quiet _click_ behind her. She moves her eyes across the scene in front of her, averting them to her phone when she’s sufficiently sure she’s alone.

She settles on just grabbing some coffee from the Starbucks in the hotel lobby as she turns the corner into the small alcove to wait for an elevator. She stays focused on her phone, shooting off a text to Abby, her walk down memory lane making her emotional enough to let her feelings bubble over in her words to the other woman.

She’s so intently focused that she doesn’t notice there’s another body, absorbed in its owner’s thoughts the same way Erin is so absorbed in hers, rounding the corner towards her.

She doesn’t look up, and neither does the other, until they’re literally running into each other, the impact causing a bag to fall from the other woman’s shoulder with a dramatic clanking thud.

Erin isn’t sure what happens first, because several things happen in the span of a second.

Her own bloodshot eyes make contact with bright blue ones, the red rings around them making it clear the other person had been crying not too long before.

She reaches out a hand to steady herself and feels the electricity flowing between her fingertips and the places on the arm she grabs that are making skin-to-skin contact. 

Her frame of sight expands and she takes in a head of messy blonde curls framing pale skin and smeared makeup, then expands again, noting the same gray suit she’d seen on stage the night before.

And her world grinds to a halt, refusing to turn another degree, the moment she realizes that the very woman she was trying to avoid is the woman she nearly flattened.

Her heart races and thuds in her chest, threatening to burst through her skin, but then again, Jillian Holtzmann had always had that effect on her.

Her eyes widen as her brain desperately fires clashing instructions to every other part of her body.

_Run_.

_Apologize_.

_Cry._

_Scream_.

A second passes, then another, and another. Erin’s body latches onto one of her mind’s commands and she feels a sob build in her chest. The ache in her head is escalated by her pounding heart, and her stomach clenches at the pain. She opens her mouth, then closes it.

Her eyes fully take in what’s happening in front of her. For as much as her pain is etched across her face – and she knows it is – it’s reflected back just as intensely in the eyes of the woman she’s staring at. Mascara tracks lightly down her cheeks, as if she’d known it was smeared and tried to hide it by wiping it off. The skin under her eyes has a dark tinge to it, and Erin wonders if the blonde had slept even less than she did. 

_But for a better reason_. The thought flashes quickly through her mind, bringing her back to tears. Erin isn’t sure what upsets her more – the thought of Holtzmann with someone else, the loneliness and longing she’d been feeling at the other woman’s absence for the past few months, or the absolute heartbreak that was written across Holtzmann’s face as they stared at each other.

“Jillian,” Erin chokes out, her throat tight around the words. The name feels almost foreign in her mouth. The engineer’s eyes darken at the use of her first name, and Erin immediately fears she’s crossed a line. “I’m sorry, Holtzmann.” The correction feels more normal, but still not right.

“Erin,” Holtzmann’s voice sounds like she had to physically rip the words from her throat. She bites her lip as soon as the word is past them, and Erin can’t help but let her eyes follow the action, remembering what else those lips had brushed over and what other skin those teeth had marked.

Erin can feel her chest pulling itself towards the blonde, her arms craving to feel the light warmth of another body – that particular other body – wrapped up in them. Her brain is firing commands for her hands to take Holtzmann’s, to intertwine her fingers through the engineer’s, to take her into her arms once again and hesitate to ever let her go. 

But she can’t. She struggles for a moment, internal battle raging on. Part of her wants to press the blonde against a wall and kiss her so hard they both forget their names, part of her wants to run and not stop until her chest is heaving and her lungs are burning and her legs are screaming, and part of her wants to melt into the floor and become a part of the hotel forever.

Instead, she apologizes again, her brain finally firing commands that push through her mental block. The words slip past her lips before she’s fully aware that she’s apologizing, her body moving itself awkwardly around the other woman towards the elevator. She stares at the corner where two walls meet the ceiling, willing herself to focus on that spot and not turn to glance at the blonde behind her.

She doesn’t see Holtzmann’s face crumble, or the way she’s now biting down hard on her bottom lip, or the way her hands clench into fists and unclench at her sides. She certainly doesn’t see the single tear that leaks out of the corner of one eye as the blonde hangs her head and turns the corner, dragging the duffel bag with the containment unit and proton guns behind her.

Erin’s eyes stay focused on the same corner until the elevator pings its arrival in front of her. She can barely find the energy to reach out and press the button to take her to the lobby. She’s exhausted even though her day hasn’t even started, and she barely suppresses a groan at the thought of a whole day full of mingling and socializing and _people_.

Half an hour later her mood is somewhat improved by the coffee in one hand and a sympathetic text from Abby about mingling in the other. She finds a silver lining in her literal running into Holtzmann, because the few seconds on the 11th floor all but wiped the remnants of her hangover from her body.

It’s almost 10:15 and the lobby is now buzzing with women chattering about the countless different aspects of science they studied. She revels in it for a few minutes, loving to hear the happiness and excitement for the field that’s been her greatest source of comfort and confidence for the majority of her life. She does her best to hold on to that feeling throughout the day, letting it carry her through the presentations she listens to and letting it give her a little bit of courage as she presents her own work – nothing as exciting as she would’ve had to discuss as a Ghostbuster, and her audience is less receptive than they would have been if she was still part of the team, she thinks.

She tries not to let it bother her, but there’s an obvious deflating of most of the women in the room when she reveals that she won’t be talking about ghost physics, but plain, boring, regular physics instead. She finishes out her presentation, hearing the flatness in her own voice, and smiles tightly at the smattering applause she receives.

As the third session draws to a close, she fights off the urge to return to the room and collapse on the bed until the end of the conference. Instead, she picks a room at random and sits down in the back row, ducking her head and staring at her hands.

She doesn’t even notice the woman with short, dark hair and pale skin take the seat next to her, until the other woman is leaning over to whisper something into her ear.

“…huh?” she turns to her side and blinks slowly, registering the woman’s hazel eyes which would have been striking, had she not been focused on a particular pair of bright blue ones instead.

“I asked where your interest in agricultural sciences came from, Dr. Gilbert,” the other woman’s voice, soft and low, was warm against her skin. Erin could hear the teasing smile in it.

Is she really sitting in a presentation on…farm science? She could feel the blush creeping up her next as she stammered, trying to make up an excuse as she surreptitiously glances at the screen at the front of the room. There’s a picture of a tractor.

Farm science.

For the first time since landing in Chicago, Erin giggles. “You caught me. I just picked a room and sat down. I am just really, really _not_ feeling this conference.” She isn’t sure why she’s talking with a stranger, but she finds herself enjoying it. 

The woman shoots her a knowing glance. “Dr. Vanessa Engell,” she says, a smile pulling at her lips, as she extends her hand for Erin to take in an awkward side-to-side handshake.

“Dr. Erin Gilbert…but I guess you already knew that,” Erin says, frowning slightly. “But…how _did_ you know that?”

“Believe it or not, the work you did with the Ghostbusters was…pretty influential, at least with a small group of scientists,” the woman shrugs. “When I saw your name on the program for the weekend, I knew I had to meet you.” The blush returns to Erin’s neck and climbs steadily up her cheeks as she feels the other woman’s eyes travelling over her body.

Vanessa keeps up a stream of quiet flirtation throughout the presentation, which Erin welcomes as a pleasant distraction. She can feel the warmth of the other woman’s body close to hers, and it reminds her of the last body to be that close to hers in any way.

Erin forces thoughts of the blonde engineer to the back of her mind for what feels like the hundredth time that day. She flirts back, lightly brushing Vanessa’s forearm, thigh, hand, whatever she can reach without being too obvious. It only feels a little forced to her.

She isn’t sure if it was her meeting with Holtzmann in the hallway or knowing that she’d interrupted a walk of shame or the fact that she was in a new place with a woman she’d never meet again, but a seed of bravery is planted in Erin’s soul, watered by the other woman’s light touches and whispered comments. Erin has no idea if the woman knows she plays for the same team, and if she does, how she would have that information, but she pushes the doubt to the back of her mind.

So, when the dark-haired woman asks if she’d like to grab some dinner with her after the presentation is over, Erin agrees, even though she still can’t get blonde curls and a dimpled smile off her mind.

When the other woman’s fingers brush lightly against hers as they walk carefully through the hotel lobby, Erin doesn’t pull away, even though the pale skin doesn’t feel quite right against hers, and the hand is too big for her to hold.

When Vanessa leans in to press her lips against Erin’s cheek as they stand up after eating, Erin only hesitates for a second before relaxing into the light kiss, even though the lips are sticky with gloss and the unfamiliar perfume makes her nostrils prickle.

The women walk slowly back to the hotel, chatting about their careers and the projects they have underway. Erin can feel herself growing more comfortable – her laugh is a little more genuine, her answers a little more honest, the closer they get to the hotel.

Vanessa pauses when they reach the hotel, her hand on one of the doors. An invitation to go back to her room is almost drowned out by a horn blaring from the street behind them, but Erin catches the words, her brain latching onto their meaning.

“I’d love to,” she blurts out, before she even makes the decision to do so. For the hundred and first time that day she pushes thoughts of Jillian Holtzmann from her mind, feeling her heart tighten as she says it.

A smirk spreads across Vanessa’s face as she tightens her grip on the door and opens it, allowing Erin to walk through first. “Perfect,” she says, her voice low again. “Do you mind taking the stairs? I’m only on the second floor.”

Erin shakes her head and smiles, Vanessa responding by squeezing her hand. They walk towards the stairs, their bodies close together. Vanessa laces her fingers through Erin’s. 

It still doesn’t feel right. Erin still ignores it.

Vanessa leans against the door to the staircase, pushing it open with her body. She glances almost nervously at Erin, who stares back, her eyes travelling over the other woman’s face. They stay like that until the door drifts shut with a click behind Erin.

They walk up the first flight of steps slowly, Vanessa always a few steps ahead of Erin. When she reaches the first landing, she pauses, turning back to look at Erin with another smirk across her face.

Erin blinks, and before she can open her eyes, the other woman is pressing her lips to Erin’s. Erin responds by wrapping one arm around the other woman’s waist and threading her other hand into her short hair. She feels hands at her hips and is dimly aware of a door creaking open somewhere above her.

Vanessa pulls away, a mischievous grin spreading over her lips. “Wow,” she breathes out, tugging on Erin’s hand, towards the second flight of stairs that would take them up to the second floor. 

Erin’s foot is on the bottom step when a scream pierces the air around them. In a haunting way she can’t place, it’s familiar to her. Although she knows it wasn’t from in the staircase, Erin can’t place where it did come from. Both women burst through the door into the lobby at the same time, finding themselves facing a crowd of bodies rushing past them.

Erin can hear heavy thuds from one of the larger conference rooms down the hall from the stairway, like furniture being thrown around. The familiar scent of ionization creeps over her senses, and she notices a chill in the air. 

Everything clicks into place in her mind, and she feels the blood in her veins turn to ice. There’s a ghost in the hotel, and a pretty angry one, if the sounds are any indication.

Her body temperature drops again when another scream rings out, this one sounding even more desperate than the last, followed by a plea for help.

Erin knows the voice, and knows why it was so haunting to her the first time. It’s a scream that she’s only heard a few times, but each time, the body responsible for it was in a life-or-death situation. 

The scream is Holtzmann’s.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Come visit me on Tumblr (anothercaffeinatedlesbian) and let me know if you loved it, liked it, hated it, wanna see more of it!


	8. and now you're looking pretty in a hotel bar

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Holtzmann's perspective on the events of day.

Holtzmann watches through the window as the sky fades from black, studded with twinkling stars, to shades of deep purple, eventually streaking through with pinks and oranges and yellows, until she catches the sun slip up over the horizon. She’d drifted in and out of an uneasy sleep, wandering through dreams of Erin. Her mind was disorganized when she gave up on rest for the night, blurring the past and the present and wanting nothing more than to just reach out and feel Erin against her, somehow.

She’d spent the few months leading up to the conference doing her best to push thoughts of the physicist from her mind. She removed almost all traces of the other woman from her daily life, carefully picking up the pieces Erin had left behind and filing them away, never to be touched again. With the help of Abby and Patty, she’d started to rebuild.

She’s terrified of what the weekend is doing to her progress.

She shifts in the bed slowly, trying to keep the woman next to her from waking up, turning her attention from the window to the ceiling. The other woman stirs for a moment, then leans in towards Holtzmann. An arm is suddenly thrown across her stomach at the same time a leg shifts and covers hers, and Holtzmann groans inwardly, realizing she’s almost pinned down.

It’s almost 9:00, according to the watch on her wrist. She has a full day to face, even skipping the first session, and it makes her insides constrict.

She stays for two more minutes, taking in the feeling of the bed beneath her and the other woman’s body next to her, until the overwhelming sensations make her skin crawl. It doesn’t feel right to be so surrounded by someone else.

Her mind flashes to Erin again. It’s not a complete picture, more like pieces of other images, all thrown together and muddled. The other woman’s face, her voice, her laugh, the way her body felt pressed against Holtzmann’s the first night they spent together.

Erin had been adorably nervous, Holtzmann confidently hesitant. There had been tears afterwards, tears that had embarrassment prickling through Erin’s body but that Holtzmann had wiped away with a swipe of her thumb before wrapping her arms around the physicist and pulling her close against her own chest.

They had fallen asleep that way, Erin tucked against Holtzmann, both warm and safe under the excessively large collection of blankets and pillows the engineer kept on her bed.

The meetings that followed that one all fell into the same pattern – nervousness, ecstasy, whispered happiness beneath the glow of the moon and stars and city lights. Until one day there wasn’t nervousness anymore, just ecstasy and the easiest thing Holtzmann had ever experienced.

The woman beside her pulls her from memories of the woman in her mind. She sighs quietly.

Moving slowly again, Holtzmann moves her legs towards the edge of the bed and rolls up at her hips, sliding out from underneath the other woman’s limbs. The cool air hits her stomach as the sheets fall away and she feels goosebumps rise along her arms. 

Her clothes are scattered around the room. She moves silently, picking up a lost sock here, a cute little bowtie there. Her body slips back into her clothes from the night before easily. She’s just wrapping her fingers around the doorknob when she feels a body press against her back. The other woman slips her hand over Holtzmann’s. 

“Leaving so soon?” the woman murmurs, pressing a kiss to the spot just behind her ear. “I was kind of hoping for a little more fun.”

The smirk in the woman’s voice makes Holtzmann’s skin crawl. Although one-night stands were Holtzmann’s preferred method of contact with other females, she didn’t usually encounter them in the mornings – she was usually long gone by the time the other women opened their eyes, a hastily-scrawled ‘thanks and bye’ note resting on the pillow where her head had rested through the night.

The morning after wasn’t her favorite part.

She grimaces, then shimmies her body around so that her back is against the door and she’s facing the other woman. The door is cold and the handle is pressing into her hip, but she ignores it, pasting what she hopes is a nonchalant smile across her face. She raises her hands into a dramatic shrug.

“I’m sorry, baby. I gotta shower and get ready for the day. I still have science to learn!” The excuse is cheesy and she knows it, but she continues with it. “And we already missed the first session, so I really shouldn’t miss much more.”

“What, you’re going to go and shower all alone? And waste all that water?” The other woman’s eyes are mischievous. Her hands go to Holtzmann’s, trying to pull the blonde into the bathroom.

Holtzmann tries to keep the edge of annoyance out of her voice. “I can’t well go walking around today in the same outfit I wore last night, now can I?” She winks, but can tell it doesn’t quite hide the flash of irritation in her eyes.

The other woman’s face falls, but Holtzmann’s hand is already opening the door behind her and slipping into the hallway, throwing a promise to find the woman later that night back into the room behind her.

They both know it’s a lie, but Holtzmann can’t find the capacity to care too deeply. She sets off towards where the elevators are housed, but continues past them, deciding to take the stairs instead. Her echoing footsteps as she descends the stairs are the only sound in the staircase and she focuses on the sound, trying to match the pace of her racing mind to the steady clap of her shoes.

The cool air that hits her the moment she steps outside of the hotel is a welcome relief. Despite the somewhat early hour, cars flash by on the streets and people hurry past, their heads bent, fast on their way to wherever they’re going.

She draws a cigarette from the box in her back pocket, grateful she’d thought to grab them before she left her room the night before. She takes a long drag and digs her phone out of another pocket, knowing Abby would have responded to her text from the night before by now. 

Before even reading the message she dials Abby’s number, listening to the other end of the line ring a few times before the other woman’s voice tumbled out of the earpiece.

“What’s up, Holtzy?” Abby’s voice is heavy with unasked questions. She can hear a shouted greeting from Patty somewhere in the background, and it makes her smile.

“Tell Patty I said hi,” the blonde instructs, thankful to have friends so excited to hear from her. She pauses, trying to put her thoughts and feelings into words. Silence settles around her, despite the busy world passing her on all sides.

“Holtzmann, c’mon, what’s up?” Abby’s prompt breaks the silence and releases the dam of thoughts floating in Holtzmann’s head.

“I was making so much progress, or at least I thought I was,” Holtzmann’s words come out slowly, but Abby gives her all the time she needs. She knows the engineer can have trouble solidifying her thoughts and feelings, and even more trouble getting them from her head to her lips. Once again, Holtzmann is thankful for her best friend’s patience.

“Then I saw her and it’s all falling apart. It’s like…seeing her shatters my whole world but there’s something even better past all the pieces. She breaks me but makes me whole again,” Holtzmann’s eyebrows pull together into a frown as the words tumble past her lips.

“Jillian,” Abby’s voice is soft. “You still love her.”

Holtzmann doesn’t say anything, but she knows Abby is right. As hard as she’d worked, and is still working, she knows her feelings for the physicist will never completely fade.

“I know, Abs,” Holtzmann sighs. “But…she doesn’t love me anymore.”

The words feel heavy on her tongue as she pushes them past her teeth and out into the air. She recognizes the truth in them. Any hope that had bubbled into her chest the previous day was gone. In its space she felt a void expanding, sucking her soul and everything else housed in her chest into it, making her entire body go numb.

“You don’t know that, Holtz,” Abby counters, and Holtzmann hears Patty shout something in the background. “And Patty says y’all need to just make up already so Erin can come back to work.”

“Guys, she walked away from my presentation last night. The second I hit the stage, she got up and left,” Holtzmann says, her voice betraying the tears that spring to her eyes, as the words take her back to the night before.

“Have you considered maybe she just wasn’t expecting to see you?” Abby reasons. The engineer has to admit that the thought hadn’t crossed her mind, but the void in her chest has made her brain go numb, and the idea doesn’t really register.

“I guess not, but…I don’t know,” she shifts her weight from foot to foot, weighing her options of listening to Abby or shutting down. “I didn’t see her last night. You know that. I wanted to talk to her but…I fucked that up.” The weight of her mistake finally hits her. It sits on her chest and makes it hard to move air through her lungs. She feels a tear fall onto her cheek.

Abby says something to her, but she only half-hears the words. She checks her watch again, and it’s 9:15 exactly. She knows she’ll miss the second session too if she doesn’t move, so she quickly squeezes out a goodbye and hangs up, flicking the long-forgotten cigarette to the ground.

Her movements seem slower than usual as she makes her way through the lobby, slowing down even more as the elevator starts its climb to the 11th floor. She plays with the cell phone in her hands, turning the device over and over, watching the way the lights on the ceiling dance across the glossy case.

She gets lost in the instant gratification of happy thoughts, scenes involving her going back to the shared hotel room later that night and fixing things and communicating and explaining how wrong she knew she’d been to yell and not chase after her months before. She knows that reality won’t work out quite so in her favor, and the certainty of that rips through her like claws opening her chest.

The door pings, bringing her out of her reverie. Her eyes stay focused on her phone and her mind returns to its wanderings as she steps from the elevator car into the hallway.

Her feet carry her without a conscious command from her brain. She quickly falls back into her happy, distracting thoughts, pulling her attention away from her path. She doesn’t look up as she rounds the corner, until her body collides with another.

The bag of equipment from the night before slips from her shoulder and lands on the floor at her feet with a loud thud. It’s the last thing she recognizes as being outside of herself and the person she’s literally run into. She later thinks that, if she looked back, all the time and weight and turning of the world could have been contained in that single sound, and she wouldn’t have noticed.

She blinks as she raises her head, and when her eyes open again, her world stops.

She sees bloodshot blue eyes staring back into her own tearful ones, and the sight makes electricity dance over her skin.

A hand reaches out for her arm, steadying the other woman, so warm on her skin that Holtzmann thinks the woman must be burning her where they touch, but it’s a familiar warmth that she recognizes as one she’s missed.

She takes in long, light brown hair, barely dry from a shower, that frames a clean face crafted careful to conceal the cracking soul behind its eyes.

The signals that would force her body to move, to speak, to think, to do _something_ are scrambled on their way from her brain to her limbs. She stays there, frozen, unable to move her eyes away from the face of the woman in front of her.

She can feel her heart thudding in her chest, and it resonates painfully throughout her body. She tries to convey everything her mouth won’t say with her eyes, but she watches as Erin freezes.

Holtzmann can’t tell if a second or a year passes, but she eventually sorts out the signals firing from her mind and takes a deep breath, blinking and taking in the wider frame in front of her.

She pulls one of the million thoughts that have turned into a tornado through her head and pushes it to her mouth. She’s forming the words _I’m sorry_ on her tongue when she hears her name fall from Erin’s lips, tight and small but almost music to hear ears. Erin corrects herself, uses Holtzmann’s last name, and the engineer thinks her heart could burst.

“Erin,” she returns, feeling the word tear at her throat, nothing in her body used to saying the other woman’s name like that anymore. She bites at her lip to stop another of her million thoughts from falling past them.

Whatever is blocking her brain shatters when she says the physicist’s name and it fires a thousand signals to each of her body parts all at once. She wants to lean in to the other woman, to feel arms wrapped around her, holding her tight. She wants to tilt her head backwards and press her lips to the other woman’s, to breathe Erin’s name into her and feel Erin’s hands running over her body.

Before her arms and hands and lips can sort out the commands, Erin is slipping around her, reaching for the elevator. Holtzmann watches as she turns and picks a spot on the ceiling to stare at, refusing to look behind her.

Time catches up to Holtzmann and Erin, and the blonde feels a new tear in her heart for each second that passes. The vision of Erin’s back swims as tears rise in her eyes, hot and stinging. Her heartbeat is pounding in her ears.

The elevator arrives as a single tear falls onto her cheek, cutting a path down her jaw until it splashes onto her chest. She turns around the corner, dragging the duffel bag behind her, hearing the equipment clank together with each step.

The tears continue as she pulls out the key card and unlocks the door to their room. The session she’s supposed to be attending is pushed from her mind as she shuts the door behind her and leans against it, sliding down until she’s sitting on the floor.

She doesn’t try to stop the tears. Erin always made her brain go silent in a good way, calming her down and anchoring her, but now it was shooting off all the wrong signals as soon as the other woman was in the room.

How was she supposed to carry on a full conversation, apologize and fix things, if she couldn’t even work out how to form a word?

She sits with her back against the door until her tears stop and her cheeks are dry and she’s sure her legs will need at least twenty minutes to uncurl themselves from under her. A glance at her watch tells her it’s 10:00. She knows a shower will make her feel at least marginally better, so she hoists herself forward and crawls into the bathroom.

She spends half an hour curled on the shower floor, but she can’t tell if it’s a second or a full day. Her skin is red and angry from the hot water as she dries off afterwards. She brushes her teeth quickly, then falls into the bed, burying herself into the thick blankets and drifting off to an easy sleep.

She jerks awake three hours later, but stays under the covers, staring at the bed next to hers. She knows Erin was sleeping there twelve hours before, hands gripping the covers tucked under her chin like they always did.

Holtzmann sits up with a sigh, reaching for her suitcase to pull out the next Abby-approved Professional Person outfit. For the second day in a row, she pulls on her clothes mechanically, not paying attention to what her friends had picked out.

She moves to the bathroom, muscle memory controlling her fingers as she pins her hair back. Within half an hour she’s ready to go, and she walks towards the elevator slowly. She still has two sessions to sit through before her presentation, and she’s not looking forward to either of them.

She surprises herself with how easily she manages to let her mind wander, and the sessions pass quickly. She chats and asks questions and answers others, managing to focus on her work for a few hours. It’s 5:30 when the second one ends, and she makes her way back to the elevator to go back to her room.

The lobby is full when she enters, and she carefully steps around other women as she walks towards the crowd waiting for the elevators. She takes it all in while waiting, gazing out over the other women enjoying their weekends of science. A small smile plays across her lips as happiness at the scene in front of her bubbles up in her chest.

Not much in Holtzmann’s life has been constant outside of the world of science. Even her closest friendships were built as a result of science. As a little girl, science had been her escape, the one thing she excelled at. It became clear that science was her calling, and she fell easily into research and innovation in college. As an adult, science was literally her life, and she can’t think of a better way to spend her days. Looking out at the crowd and seeing all of the other women who lived the same way puts sunshine in her heart.

Until her eyes are drawn to an all-too-familiar face, lips spread wide in a giggling grin, eyes almost as alight as Holtzmann had ever seen them.

Erin is standing too close to a woman with short, dark hair framing a pale face, laughing at something she’s just said, a hand lightly brushing the other woman’s arm. Holtzmann swears she can hear the laughter from across the packed lobby, and the sound burns in her ears.

She barely notices the crowd pressing her into an elevator, and almost misses the woman closest to the door asking her what floor she needed.

“Eleven,” she responds, glancing vaguely in the other woman’s direction. The elevator reaches her floor and she pushes her way out, glancing up and down the hallway to make sure they’re clear before setting off slowly to her room.

The duffel bag is waiting for her just inside the door, but she decides not to take all of her equipment. She doesn’t have time to explain how to work proton guns to anyone like she’d done the night before, so she throws a single weapon for herself into her backpack along with the containment unit, then heaves the bag onto her back with a heavy sigh.

The elevator she rides back down to the lobby is empty. Her stomach growls into the emptiness and she realizes she hasn’t eaten anything since the night before. She makes a mental note to find something after the presentation.

She finds the room easily after she leaves the elevator. It’s a much smaller room than the night before, ideal for the more in-depth explanation of the science behind her device that she’s supposed to be giving. The conference organizer is already waiting for her at the front of the room, and Holtzmann makes her way to the other woman.

The room fills slowly, women trickling in from other presentations or from getting food, the wafting scents making her stomach even more insistent that it be filled soon. She putters around the podium, chatting lightly with the women in the front rows, willing herself to let the previous night’s success calm her.

The portable microcontainment unit rests on a table next to her, her proton gun right next to her notes as she begins her speech. The first half of the presentation goes off without a hitch. She successfully releases the entity and captures it quickly with a shot from her proton gun, forcing it back into the small containment unit while keeping up a steady stream of explanatory narrative for her audience. The unit clicks shut on the first try, and Holtzmann turns towards the women watching her with a triumphant smile.

She’s just starting in on an elaborate speech about the engineering of it all when the unit starts to smoke and shake next to her, rattling against the table. She sees apprehension spring up in the eyes of the women in the first row and tries to arrange her own features into a mask of cool, calm, collectedness.

It works until the unit cracks open and the ghost – that of a very disgruntled mob boss who is hell-bent on revenge – springs out of it.

Holtzmann’s senses are overwhelmed as her brain tries to make sense of the situation in front of her. She dimly registers the mad rush of bodies towards the door. Her hand is already around the proton gun and she takes aim, but feels a blow connect with her stomach, knocking her backwards, into the wall behind her.

Her vision goes dark for a moment, but she’s aware of the bloodcurdling scream that tears from her lips at the same time. She opens her eyes to see furniture flying around the room, the last of her audience members running for safety and, she prays, help. Scrambling to her feet, she steps forward, towards the center of the room.

The entity is in front of her again, looming above her, a wicked grin on its face and an evil glint in its eyes. She screams again, forming a single word this time, _help_.

She’s been frightened and worried on many busts, but she’s rarely faced anything this angry and destructive, and she’s never been alone for any of them. She recognizes that there’s no one who will help her. She squeezes her eyes shut again, slamming her finger against the trigger, hoping to at least slow the spirit down.

Erin’s face flashes through her mind. The way the physicist always watched her back during busts, the unspoken communication between them always leading to success. Her eyes crack open just in time to see the entity rushing towards her again and she aims her gun towards it, letting out another wordless scream.

The ghost connects with her body and sends her flying, first slamming her against the ceiling, then tossing her back into a wall. She slumps to the ground, willing herself to cling onto the last few threads of consciousness and fight back, but feels it slipping away.

Her eyes dart desperately around the room, hoping to see someone – _anyone_ – to help her. She feels the last fragments of hope drain from her heart as she accepts that the room and its doorways are empty.

The last thing she hears before slipping into darkness is another proton stream being released. Her eyes move towards where the sound comes from and she sees in a figure standing on the opposite side of the room, then her eyes drift shut and her world is silent.


	9. i was doing just fine before i met you

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Erin and Holtzmann's experiences as they fall for each other.

Erin Gilbert is never quite sure when she fell so deeply, wonderfully, terrifyingly in love with Jillian Holtzmann. 

She’s not sure when seeing the other woman became the highlight of her day, or when that escalated to the blonde becoming her daily safety net, the biggest constant in her daily life, without whom days were longer and harder and darker.

She’s not sure when the light touches as they worked side-by-side, either busting or building or solving equations, spilled over into their free time together, becoming an arm thrown across a shoulder on the couch or a thigh pressed against another in a booth at one of the local bars they frequented.

She’s not sure when the flirting turned from an innocent joke on the engineer’s part to something that could make her heart race and her cheeks light up brighter than the New York City skyline at night, or something that Erin eventually learned to return in kind.

She can’t put her finger on the exact moment she starts loving Holtzmann; all she can say is that it most definitely happens.

It happens in the big moments – watching Holtzmann take down ghosts, seeing the excitement in her voice and movements when she finally gets an invention to work, admiring the way she always takes time for the little girls who watch them exit a building after a bust with wide eyes and curious expressions, answering their questions with nothing less than utter sincerity.

It happens in the small moments – the way her brow furrows into a frown when something about an invention stumps her, the half-asleep, irritated but half-hearted cursing when they got a call for a bust in the middle of the night, the smallness of her voice when Erin wakes her up after she accidentally spends an entire night in the lab working again before finally drifting off to sleep around 5:30.

Erin finds herself drawn to the engineer in every possible way. Holtzmann is her opposite in nearly every sense of the word and she feels herself drifting towards the other woman at her edges first, wanting to make contact with someone so wonderfully different from herself.

Holtzmann changed Erin’s definition of love, of soulmates, of happily ever after. She’d spent her life picturing a knight in shining armor, but instead life gives her an eccentric engineer in mismatched thrift store outfits and shining yellow goggles. In her eyes, it’s perfect.

As a scientist, she knows that sexuality is never constant, shifting and changing throughout lives, and that, really, labels are a social thing that only have meaning if the bearer gives them meaning. So, despite years of conditioning, she accepts what she feels for Holtzmann even while recognizing that the other woman will probably never feel the same way for her, at least not seriously. 

Until the afternoon her mentor is in the lab and she hears an introduction but is truthfully too distracted by Holtzmann’s excitement over her new invention to really hear what’s happening. But then Holtzmann is pointing at her and telling the older woman that they’re dating and suddenly Erin can’t feel the world around her but she shuts down because her brain simply can’t process that this is actually happening.

She knows she should accept it but instead she resists, vowing that she’s dating Kevin before turning on her heel and running from the room.

She spends the rest of that day sitting on the roof of the firehouse, staring at the New York City skyline as it fades from blue to pinks and oranges to a dark, inky purple. The stars are shimmering above her before she makes her way back to the lab, forcing herself to concentrate on work for at least a few hours before calling it a night.

Twenty minutes later, Holtzmann is calling her name, asking to talk.

“Oh, hey, Holtzmann,” Erin says, glancing up briefly before forcing her eyes back to her work. She’s working on a particularly difficult set of equations that, when solved, would allow them to boost the holding capacity and stamina of their containment units.

“Erin, look, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean for earlier to happen, I should have thought before I spoke, I’m so sorry,” Holtzmann says, the desperation for the other woman to believe her words clear in her voice. Erin’s heart clenches at it.

“It’s okay, Holtzmann. It was my fault, I got upset because…because--” her voice fades out, her brain unsure of what to say next. She takes a deep breath before deciding to be honest. “Because I thought you meant something you didn’t mean.”

Erin’s eyes drift upwards and catch the confusion written across the other woman’s face. Holtzmann takes a breath and opens her mouth, but Erin cuts her off, continuing her rambling honesty.

“I don’t know when I started loving you, but I did, and I do. And it’s both the best and most terrifying thing I’ve ever experienced. I’ve always thought I was straight but always knew that wasn’t necessarily always going to be the case, because I know sexuality is a spectrum and all the stigma around not being straight is just socially constructed anyway, but that doesn’t make it less terrifying,” Erin pauses to catch a breath before diving in again. “And I’ve wanted to hear you say something like you said earlier for the longest time but I was always sure someone like you wouldn’t want someone like me. I convinced myself it was a joke and ran. Because I can’t hear you say something like that unless you mean it.”

Erin is so focused on getting her confession out in as few breaths as possible to avoid running away again that she doesn’t notice Holtzmann walking towards her, closing the distance between them with each step.

“Erin, I was never anything less than serious,” Holtzmann’s voice is soft and gentle, just like the hand she’s running along Erin’s cheek.

Her body feels more alive than it ever has when Holtzmann brings her other hand up to wrap behind Erin’s neck, drawing her close. Her eyes drift shut and she feels Holtzmann’s lips pressed against hers.

Their first kiss sends electricity through Erin’s skin and fire through her veins. She swears the kiss rearranges her atoms, leaving a Holtzmann-shaped window in her very being, a hole that she is certain can never be filled as perfectly by anyone else.

In that moment, Erin realizes that her very heart and soul are drawing her to the other woman, not just her edges, not in a way that occasional, accidental contact can satisfy.

She has fallen head over heels for Jillian Holtzmann, and the thought, while terrifying, is the most completing thing she can think of for herself.

***

It takes Holtzmann roughly three seconds to fall in love with Erin Gilbert. It happens somewhere between a poorly-thought out pickup line tumbling from her lips and the other woman’s confused response, and in the next moment it occurs to her just how bad all of this could be.

Because Erin is the Erin from Abby’s story, and she doesn’t believe in ghosts, and she doesn’t believe in the work they do at Kenneth P. Higgins Institute of Science, and she’s hurt Abby so badly, and she’s _straight_ , of course, so no matter which way Holtzmann presents it to herself, she can’t make out a happy ending.

Until they see a ghost and Erin is admitting she’s always believed in them, and the relief in the other woman’s eyes is overshadowed only by pure joy at what was happening and Holtzmann thinks she could survive off the sight of that happiness alone.

Until Erin is a part of the team, firing off ideas that will help them prove their beliefs, confidence springing up behind the self-consciousness that had dimmed her genius for so long, and the certainty that Erin radiates pulls Holtzmann in like a magnet.

Until Erin and Abby have made up and Holtzmann grins at the simple thought of the fact that two of the people who mean more to her than anything else in the world – even science – want each other in their lives just as much as they want her, too.

Holtzmann flirts constantly with Erin, a part of her trying to draw attention to herself, a bigger part of her just happy for any contact with the physicist. Some days, she convinces herself that Erin is flirting back, and other days, it doesn’t take much convincing for her to believe that it’s true.

But as Holtzmann falls for Erin more with each passing day, the last part of her problem – the straight part – becomes more and more obvious. Erin’s infatuation with Kevin grows until Holtzmann can barely stand it.

And then she’s blurting out that she and Erin are dating to her mentor and Erin is insisting that she’s dating the receptionist and Holtzmann is certain she’s lost whatever small chance she had with the other woman.

She spends the rest of that day in a stony silence, the weight of her words and Erin’s response sitting heavy and hard on her chest. She slips out of the firehouse into the New York evening, the rest of the city bustling around her as it always did. She walks quickly, thankful for the press of other bodies all around her, because they distract her from her own thoughts.

Erin is the only one still up when she returns to her lab a few hours later. Night has long since set it and it lays over the firehouse, a smothering blanket of silence. The lab is cool despite the warmth in the air, but Holtzmann recognizes that it may just be the numbness in her own body.

The other woman doesn’t look up when she walks into the room, so she clears her throat softly and calls her name.

“Oh, hey, Holtzmann,” Erin responds, eyes drifting quickly to her before shooting back down to her work.

“Erin, look, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean for earlier to happen, I should have thought before I spoke, I’m so sorry,” the words tumble past her lips without a conscious decision to speak them. She can hear how anxious her words sound and hopes that the other woman catches it too.

“It’s okay, Holtzmann,” Erin says, still staring at the papers strewn across her desk. “It was my fault, I got upset because…because--” her voice fades out. Holtzmann feels her heart start to race as Erin pauses. “Because I thought you meant something you didn’t mean.”

She feels her eyebrows furrow in bewilderment and knows her confusion is clear in her eyes. She takes a deep breath, ready to explain herself and ask the other woman for clarification, when Erin cuts her off and continues to talk.

“I don’t know when I started loving you, but I did, and I do. And it’s both the best and most terrifying thing I’ve ever experienced. I’ve always thought I was straight but always knew that wasn’t necessarily always going to be the case, because I know sexuality is a spectrum and all the stigma around not being straight is just socially constructed anyway, but that doesn’t make it less terrifying,” Erin pauses to catch a breath. “And I’ve wanted to hear you say something like you said earlier for the longest time but I was always sure someone like you wouldn’t want someone like me. I convinced myself it was a joke and ran. Because I can’t hear you say something like that unless you mean it.”

Holtzmann isn’t sure how she manages to hang on to Erin’s words, because her brain starts buzzing as soon as the words ‘loving you’ are flung from Erin’s lips. But the other woman’s last sentence sticks in her mind for some reason. She repeats the words until she realizes what’s wrong.

The physicist had thought it was a joke. She didn’t think Holtzmann was absolutely, undeniably, wonderfully and terrifyingly head over heels in love with her.

“Erin, I was never anything less than serious,” she says, her voice soft and gentle. She lifts a hand to brush along Erin’s cheek, bringing the other to rest behind her neck.

She doesn’t let herself think before she starts to pull Erin closer to her, then tilts her head back to press a kiss to the other woman’s lips.

The world goes silent around her, but she feels explosions setting off all over her skin. Erin’s presence in her life is a calming violence, overshadowing everything else she sees but mooring her to the world in a way that she’s searched for her whole life. She feels her reality reorganizing itself as Erin’s reality presses against it, as if they were made for each other, and Holtzmann swears they just might be.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Alright, for real, if you've stuck through these chapters, thank you. They got way longer and took way longer than I was expecting, so thank you for your patience and persistence. I hope this chapter and the story itself makes sense, because it was all written when I should have been doing my thesis proposal instead (whoops?). Come visit me on Tumblr and let me know what you think!


	10. they'll say that i was clever

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Erin saves Holtzmann, and they make up.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm so sorry it's taken me so long to update this - I got really sucked into other things but couldn't leave this one go. I hope you like it!

Several things crash through Erin’s mind at once and she freezes, unable to process anything beyond Holtzmann’s screams, still ringing in her ears. A few seconds pass before she gathers and rearranges her thoughts into a logical order.

“Who _was_ that?” Vanessa’s eyes are wide with concern as she stares at the door they had just passed through.

Her voice pulls Erin back to reality. “I have to go, I’m sorry,” she spits out as she spins on her heel back towards the door. She vaguely hears Vanessa spluttering behind her but she’s slipping back out into the lobby.

She immediately sees a string of women running from a room close by and she darts towards the doorway, ignoring a few warnings from women who told her to go the other way. She skids to a stop in front of the room just in time to be shoved aside by the last few women who were leaving it.

Erin glances inside and her blood runs cold, her lips parting in a silent scream. She watches as a ghost tosses Holtzmann around like she’s nothing but a doll. Her mind is trying to make sense of the scene in front of her even as it’s already formulating a plan.

She knows Holtzmann must have extra weapons, but she’s unable to see anything in the room as she sweeps her eyes over the damage the ghost is doing. Her mind flashes back to that morning and the rattling thud of the bag that had slipped from the engineer’s shoulder when they ran into each other.

The bag isn’t anywhere in the room and Erin feels herself spinning again. Her feet carry her towards the elevators and she pushes through the crowd gathering there, jabbing at the call button and trying to calm her racing mind. She lets the protests and comments around her break over her ears like water over rock.

Her mind is flashing through worst-case scenarios sickeningly fast. The seconds stretch on into an eternity as Erin reaches up to punch the button again.

The elevator to her left dings and the doors slide open. She darts in first, pressing the button for the 11th floor more times than she could count. Several other women pile in behind her, selecting their own floors as they boarded. She catches snippets of their conversation and pieces together what happened with the microcontainment unit.

There had been a malfunction, she hears, something after Holtzmann had tried to put the ghost back into the containment unit. Half of Erin’s mind starts to run through scenarios of what could have caused a malfunction like that while the other half continues to flash scenes of destruction.

The elevator ascends painfully slowly and Erin bites at the inside of her cheek, trying to keep the panic at bay. She squeezes through the doors on her floor as soon as the opening is wide enough to let her through and sprints to the room.

She swings the door open hard and it connects with the edge of Holtzmann’s duffel bag. Panting, Erin reaches for it, grabbing the whole thing before turning on her heel again and running towards the elevator. She switches course at the last second, her body passing through the doorway to the staircase before she knows what she’s doing.

Erin’s feet pound out an uneven pattern on the stairs as she races down each floor to the main lobby. She’s out of breath by the time she reaches the first floor and each gasp for air burns her throat. She feels a side stich forming but ignores it, unzipping the bag and reaching for a proton gun as she slams open the door and bursts back into the lobby.

The area has almost emptied out in the time it’s taken her to travel to the 11th floor and back. Panic rises through her body again as she turns towards the room, which now seems eerily silent compared to the sounds and sights she’d experienced just two minutes earlier.

Erin presses her back against the wall just outside the room, forcing herself to take three steadying breaths. She holds the gun in front of her as she spins out against the corner, propelling herself a few feet into the room. She drops the duffel bag next to the door and stops to assess the situation.

The ghost is pissed, and Holtzmann is struggling. Erin watches as the engineer is tossed against a wall and slides down, crumpling into a pile on the floor.

Her body slips easily back into a defensive stance as the ghost swings around in her direction, rage contorting its features. Despite the months that had passed since she’d last faced anything remotely paranormal, muscle memory takes over and her body moves without a signal from her brain.

Erin raises the proton gun with shaking hands and aims at the spirit, now floating menacingly above her head. It dodges the first stream and she pulls the trigger again, this time connecting with the entity’s leg and pulling it short as it tried to move away from her.

The ghost regains control over its movements as Erin shifts below it, trying to pull it from midair. She moves over a few broken chairs and slowly moves towards where Holtzmann is still in a pile on the floor, her arms and legs stirring as she moans weakly.

Erin crouches next to Holtzmann and gently brushes hair from her eyes, murmuring soft words from the corner of her mouth while she tries to keep the ghost wrapped in the stream from her gun. The blonde responds to her words, her eyelids fluttering as she moves to sit up.

“Shh, Holtz. It’s okay. I’m here,” Erin pulls the words from deep within her body. Her throat is tight, but she isn’t sure if it’s from terror or sadness. Her hand is still in Holtzmann’s hair and her eyes dart between the engineer and the angry ghost, still struggling against the proton stream. Erin’s arm jerks through the air as the entity thrashes around, desperately trying to cast it off.

Holtzmann just whimpers in response. She shifts her body so that she’s sitting with her back against the wall. Erin takes a moment to look over the blonde’s body. Nothing sticks out at weird angles, and the few cuts to the engineer’s face and hands seem shallow.

Holtzmann’s proton gun sticks out from beneath her leg and Erin pulls at it, freeing it before turning it towards the ghost and releasing a second proton stream that wraps around its chest.

“Holtzmann,” Erin says, not taking her eyes off the entity. “Holtzmann, I need you to do this one thing for me, okay? Then we’ll get out of here.”

She pauses, waiting for a sound from the other woman. “’Kay,” the blonde’s voice is frighteningly soft, almost weak.

“I need you to hold this for me. Can you do that?” Erin shifts so that she’s holding one of the guns within Holtzmann’s reach. She keeps her eyes trained on the entity as it struggles fiercely against the bright streams wrapped around it.

The moment Holtzmann’s fingers wrap around the gun and her index finger pushes Erin’s from the trigger, releasing the pressure for just a moment, the ghost lets out a spine-chilling scream.

Erin’s blood runs cold in her veins as the shriek splits the air. It’s the kind of scream that could shatter glass; Erin realizes a moment too late that it does.

Lightbulbs shatter in quick succession across the ceiling, blowing out one by one. The only lights in the room come from the sunlight filtering through the windows and the orange glow thrown off by the proton streams. Erin glances towards the ceiling, where several large bowl-shaped lamps hang. Cracks appear and spread in the one closest to them, almost right above them.

A strangled cry escapes her lips as her mind flashes through what could happen over the next few seconds. The cracks continue to spider web across the glass bowl and Erin pushes herself up from the floor, keeping the proton gun aimed at the ghost while pulling Holtzmann with her with her free hand.

“Holtz, move!” Erin urges, tugging hard on the other woman’s arm. The blonde scrambles upwards, leaning against the wall. “Holtzmann, where’s the containment unit?” Erin asks quickly over her shoulder. She turns her head and glances towards the other woman and catches her eye for a second before turning her gaze back to the entity, taking it in fully for the first time. It’s an old man, face contorted in rage, fighting against the orange proton streams around its chest and legs.

Holtzmann’s eyes are clear and alert when she glances back at Erin. “Over there. It must’ve flown off the table when it got loose. I don’t know what happened, Er, but this is all my fault.” Holtzmann’s voice is full of fear.

“We’ll figure it out. Stay here,” Erin instructs. She keeps her proton gun trained on the spirit as she steps sideways, eyes darting to the ground in front of her to find the containment unit. She makes out a glint of silver and crouches down, one arm extended in front of her with the gun while the other reaches for the small metal box.

She lets out a sigh of relief when her fingers wrap around it, but it quickly turns to a shout of fear as the dust-covered metal slips from her grasp. She fumbles the box once before wrapping her hand tightly around it, but the entity seizes its chance and pulls on the stream shooting from Erin’s gun. Frozen with shock, her hand stays on the gun and she jerks forward, the containment unit bouncing along the floor, still in her hand.

The butt of the proton gun slips from her fingers, skittering across the floor as the stream loses power.

“Holtz!” Erin screams as she frantically wipes the dust off the containment unit and punches at the buttons on the outside. “Do you have it?”

“I got it, Er, as soon as you have the trap ready!” Holtz’s voice cuts over the sounds of the entity straining at the stream from her gun. Now that all its energy is in one place, it’s even harder for her to keep it contained.

With shaking hands Erin flips the switch on the unit and roll it across the floor. It stops a few feet in front of her before a beam of light shoots from the top.

Erin watches as Holtzmann guides the entity back into the unit, the tip of her tongue between her teeth and her brow furrowed in concentration. The ghost screams as the trap closes above it, shutting with a dull thud that resonates through the now-silent room. Erin quickly scoops it up and slips it into her pocket, where it settles against her thigh.

There’s a scream and a press of bodies into the room. Suddenly she’s surrounded, people reaching out on all sides. She sees a face she vaguely recognizes as the conference director, but Erin brushes her off with a wave of her arm.

She sees Holtzmann’s blonde hair through the crowd. Erin pushes her way through a ring of women, all trying to ask her what had happened, until she reaches Holtzmann. There’s a man in a blue uniform asking her questions, which she answers impatiently.

“No, I’m not experiencing any dizziness, blurry vision, or fainting spells,” she rattles off, pushing the medic’s hands away from her face.

“Ma’am, please,” the man responded, blocking his face with his arms to avoid Holtzmann’s slaps. “Just let me look at your eyes and I’ll sign off and you can go.”

Erin watches as the man shines a small flashlight into the engineer’s eyes. He scribbles on a clipboard and Erin overhears him talk to the blonde again.

“This is a document stating you’re acting against medical advice to be examined more thoroughly at a hospital,” the man says, shoving a pen and the clipboard under her nose. She rolls her eyes but signs it anyway, then she pushes past the man and closes the distance between her and Erin.

“Holtzmann, oh my god, are you okay? What hap--” Erin’s mind is a whirlwind of feelings ranging from relief to anticipatory heartbreak, and she can hear the emotion crackling in her words. She takes a step back and braces herself as the blonde rushes towards her, her body already in defense mode. Her questions, though, are cut short as the other woman enters her personal space and takes yet another step, pressing their bodies together and wrapping her arms around Erin’s waist.

Holtzmann doesn’t speak, just stands there holding onto Erin as the rest of the world melts away around them. The physicist snakes her arms around the other woman’s neck and presses her cheek into the top of her blonde hair. Erin’s entire body sighs in relief at finally having the other woman back in her arms. Tears burn at the corners of her eyes and she blinks them away. Before long, she feels Holtzmann shake in her arms, and hears a tiny sob bubble from her chest.

Erin inhales slowly, drawing in a deep breath and holding it before exhaling with a sigh. It calms the pressure building in her chest but Holtzmann assumes Erin is going to speak again. She tenses in Erin’s arms and pulls away, a look of panic on her face.

“I’m so sorry, Erin,” she steps back from Erin. Her chest misses the contact and her arms long to hold the blonde again. “That wasn’t appropriate, but…” her words fade out as she bites her lip, her eyes swimming with new tears. “But you saved me.” She quickly drops her gaze to the floor next to Erin.

Her heart clenches as the emotions in Holtzmann’s words, and she feels tears splash over her lashes and run down her cheek. The other woman looks so small and fragile, leaning against the wall in the crowded room. Bruises are appearing across her skin, mingling with the dried blood, and the sight makes Erin’s heart clench even harder.

“Holtzmann,” Erin whispers out, reaching for the other woman’s hands. There’s a quiver in her voice with her next words. “Jillian, I’ll always save you.”

Holtzmann’s eyes sparkle with tears when they meet Erin’s. Her heart is racing again. The adrenaline from the fight is leaving her body slowly, but she continues to shake with nerves and pent-up emotion as she watches the other woman’s face change with her words.

“I thought I lost you. I thought I was going to lose myself,” Holtzmann admits, her words quiet. “And I don’t mean just tonight.”

Something shifts in the clear blue eyes Erin can so easily lose herself in, and the fear is replaced with an intensity she’s only ever seen once – the moments before Holtzmann told Erin she loved her for the first time.

“I’m sorry,” the blonde says, stepping close to Erin again.

“I am too, Jillian. For everything,” Erin replies, her voice a whisper. “I’m sorry I was scared and I’m sorry I ran out and I’m sorry I was too scared to come back.”

She wishes briefly that they could have this conversation somewhere besides a crowded, half-destroyed conference room in a hotel. It feels impersonal and inadequate, but she lets the relief crash through her body as the words fall from her lips.

“Can we go back to the room and talk?” Holtzmann’s voice is smaller than it’s been all night, as if she’s scared of the consequences of the question she just asked. “I don’t want…I want to fix this. I can’t leave this weekend without at least trying.”

Erin searches for the words but can’t come to rest on any, so she just smiles slowly and nods. She squeezes her fingers around Holtzmann’s hand and turns towards the door, letting the other woman’s hand fall as she moves. Holtzmann follows her through the crowd, stepping into each space as Erin abandons it.

The lobby is as full as the conference room they’d just left. Women press against the front desk, looks ranging from fear to annoyance written across their faces. Red and blue from the emergency lights outside flash over the polished furniture and shiny floor.

A horde of people is queueing up in front of the elevators, and Erin’s heart sinks at the idea of being in another crowd. She closes her fingers around Holtzmann’s wrist, tugging her gently off-course towards the stairs.

“Do you mind?” she asks softly, nodding her head towards the door and glancing upwards. Holtzmann smiles and shakes her head.

The climb is longer than she remembers the flight down being. She stays quiet as she walks, focusing on keeping her breathing even. It’s a difficult task given 11 flights of stairs and the frenzied pace of her pulse thudding through her body, but by the time they finally burst through the door onto the 11th floor, she controls her breath easily.

“I’m sorry, Erin, for everything. From then and now,” Holtzmann mumbles as soon as Erin shuts the door behind them, flipping the lock. She watches as the blonde lets herself fall back onto the closer bed, and winces as she grimaces at the contact and groans. “Ouch, _fuck_.”

Erin bites back a giggle as she sits nervously at the edge of her bed. She scoots back slightly and brings her knees up to her chest, hugging them tightly.

“Are you sure you’re okay?” Erin peers across the space between the beds.

Holtzmann’s head falls towards Erin. “This is definitely not the worst I’ve gotten in a bust, Er. You should know that.”

Erin nods in agreement, her mind briefly flicking back to some of the more physical busts they’d encountered together. “But it was the first one you had to take _alone_ , Jillian,” she says, her heart skipping a beat as she used the engineer’s first name. The word was comfortable on her tongue, but left her mouth with a heaviness she hadn’t expected, like it was somehow more important than anything else she could say.

In a way, she guesses, it is.

“I wasn’t alone, though,” Holtzmann says, pushing herself up onto her elbows before sitting up completely. “But I don’t mean just tonight, Er. Please. I need to… _do_ something.”

Her eyes are on Erin’s again and Erin is powerless beneath her gaze. The blonde shifts herself on her hands until she mirrors Erin, perched on the corner of the bed, legs drawn to her chest, arms wrapped around her knees.

“Erin, I’ve known since the moment I met you that you would be the person to set my world on fire,” Holtzmann starts, and her voice is softer than Erin has ever heart it, but there is a firm seriousness behind her words, too. “You are what keeps me grounded and safe, but you’re what inspires me to reach for the stars. You’re the order in my chaotic life and one of the first real good things I had, after physics and Rebecca and Abby.”

Her eyes are on Erin’s, searching the depths of her soul for some reaction, but Erin can hardly process the words tumbling from the blonde’s mouth. Her lips tremble as she opens them to whisper out Holtzmann’s name. The other woman takes a breath and continues.

“You came into my life and you…you rearranged me, Erin. You made a space for your being in mine, and that hole has just…it’s just _here_ now,” the blonde circles her hand over her chest, over her heart. “And it’s been empty every single day since you left, and I’ve tried to fill it with so many things, Er, but nothing’s quite like _you_.”

Holtzmann’s speech is drawn-out, punctuated by pauses and stalling, but the message finally sinks into Erin’s brain.

“Holtzmann,” Erin starts, shifting and unbending her legs until her feet are flat on the floor before wrapping her arms around herself, gripping her sides and squeezing tightly. “Holtzmann, I’m sorry I was scared and embarrassed and…a self-loathing homophobe,” she finishes lamely, hanging her head. She glances briefly at the other woman, who is staring at her own hands intently. Erin can see a tinge of pink on her cheeks. “But I was never embarrassed of _you_. I was always so proud to be with such a bright, brilliant, beautiful woman like you,” her voice is quiet as she speaks.

Holtzmann looks up slowly, a mixture of emotions written across her face. “You…you weren’t?” she asks, her voice barely above a whisper. Her feet slide from the edge of the bed and land on the floor with a soft thump.

The surprise and strain in the engineer’s voice squeezes the air from Erin’s lungs and she leans across the space between them, taking Holtzmann’s hands lightly in her own.

“Never,” Erin says, shaking her head. “I was embarrassed because I was a fully grown woman having a gay panic. I mean, it’s one thing to be into women, it’s another to be _with_ one, and so much had changed since we all became the Ghostbusters that it was just a lot of…” her voice fades out as she searches for the right words. “I came out in a lot of ways in a little time. I’m not as good at not caring what people think of me as I try to be. And being out about myself was just…too much to add.”

Erin feels the flimsiness in her own excuses, no matter the intention behind her actions, and it makes her cringe. She pulls her hands away and leans back.

“You didn’t run because you were embarrassed of me?” Holtzmann’s voice is still soft. She says the words slowly, as if she’s trying to convince herself of the truth behind them.

“I wasn’t embarrassed of you. I was embarrassed of me,” Erin says simply. “I know it’s not an excuse and I wouldn’t blame you for not wanting to talk to me again. Especially not because I ran away from our work, too.”

“Yeah, it was rough at first, I won’t say it wasn’t,” Holtzmann laughs nervously, glancing at Erin before shaking her head. “Abby’s brilliant but her strengths are in other things. But…we got through.”

“I’m sorry,” Erin repeats, staring at the floor. “I’m sorry I didn’t come back. But it was hard, because I knew things would never be the same. I knew I couldn’t be around you, and I knew Abby and Patty would want to know why--”

Her words are cut short as Holtzmann opens her mouth. “They always knew, Er. They didn’t care. They just wanted us – _you_ – to say it on your own.”

Erin’s cheeks blaze red again. “I know they always knew,” she sighs, rubbing her hands down her face. “But still. I couldn’t face telling them afterwards, especially not after…not after you called it _fucking_. Because it was never just that to me, because I was in love with you. And then you said you didn’t want me anymore and I…I just couldn’t come back.”

Her shaking voice fades to silence and she looks up at Holtzmann.

“Erin, I was _hurt_. You made me feel the kinds of things that should be shouted from rooftops and written across the skies in letters as tall as a building and I thought I made you feel them too, but you only whispered it. I thought you were ashamed of me,” Holtzmann’s voice is low and full of emotion as she reaches for Erin’s hands. “I said everything I shouldn’t have said that night because I didn’t think, because I never think about consequences or what I say or do. It was _never_ just fucking, and Jesus, Er, the last thing I wanted was for you to leave. You’re all I’ve ever wanted.”

Erin’s breath catches as Holtzmann jumps from the edge of her bed, propelling her body towards Erin on the other bed. She falls backwards as the other woman crashes into her, a strangled cry of shock and desire escaping her lips. Holtzmann is still above her for a moment, holding herself up on her hands on either sides of Erin’s head.

Erin loses herself in the blonde’s eyes for a moment. Her body reacts to the warmth of the other woman’s closeness and she stops herself from wrapping her arms around Holtzmann’s waist for a few seconds before giving in and pulling her even closer.

She doesn’t know what clicks in her or what sparks back to life between them. Maybe it’s something in the brush of Erin’s fingers along the bare strip of skin between the bottom of Holtzmann’s shirt and the top of her pants, or something in the way their eyes are locked together, or something in the way their breathing slows and synchs until they’re almost sharing air. But there’s the tiniest shift and Erin feels it flow through her as things click back into place.

Her eyes drift shut as their lips crash together.

The wall that Erin had been building higher ever since the firehouse door slammed behind her start to crack and crumble as Holtzmann’s lips press against hers. The kiss is slow and light and only lasts a few seconds before Holtzmann pulls back.

“Are you okay?” she whispers and Erin feels the words slip over her skin.

She nods, reaching her head up to kiss the corner of Holtzmann’s mouth before pressing another kiss to her cheek.

“Better than I’ve been in months.” Erin knows there is still so much more to talk about, but she takes pity on the other woman as her face stretches in a barely-contained yawn. “You’re exhausted, aren’t you?”

Another yawn rumbles from Holtzmann’s chest and she nods. When she glances back at Erin, her eyes are half-closed.

Erin slides out from underneath the engineer and scoots up towards the pillows, pulling the covers back and tucking her legs under them. She turns to face the other woman, patting the space next to her, but Holtzmann shakes her head and stands up from the bed.

“I need to shower, Er,” she bites her lip, holding in another yawn. “But give me half an hour and I am _so_ there.” The wink she tosses at Erin is lost in the grumble that sounds from her stomach. “Oh…maybe I should eat something, actually.”

Erin knows the other woman must be starving because her afterthought isn’t accompanied by any kind of sexual comment. She laughs before tossing the covers back off her legs.

“Why don’t you shower and get dressed, then we can go get something to eat?” Erin bends over her suitcase, picking out clothes to change into herself. She flashes Holtzmann a smile when she straightens up, which the blonde returns before walking towards the bathroom.

Erin lifts her shirt over her head and misses Holtzmann turning back to stare at her, one hand on the door to the bathroom.

“And, Erin?”

Erin quickly pulls the shirt from her arms and lets it drop to the floor next to her. “Yes?”

“I love you.”

Warmth radiates from Erin’s chest throughout her body and a smile spreads across her lips. For the first time in months, she lets herself feel truly happy.

“I love you too, Jillian.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for your patience with this section, but I hope you enjoyed it!


	11. let's show them we are better

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Holtzmann's perspective on things.

Holtzmann floats through a darkness that seems to flow through her, too. It fills all the corners and crevices of her mind, trickling into and over everything. It leaves her body feeling strangely empty, like a balloon lying on the floor after it deflates. It’s unusual but not unpleasant, and she makes no attempt to pull herself out.

Something tugs at the base of her brain, dragging her attention to the small crack in the haziness where light and clarity cut through the darkness. An echoing, vibrating snap swirls through her mind. She grasps onto it, feeling the way it pulls her back and forth through the darkness. When she swings her sight over the crack of light she sees it’s grown slightly.

Another sound bounces through her ears. It’s a low, solid sound, a long note of one pitch. It fades out and she relaxes back into the silence before it starts again. The sound rumbles through the darkness and she bounces along with it.

As the second note fades and a third picks up, she feels the emptiness just beyond her reach swirl around her body.

Something presses against her in the darkness, first in one spot, then moving to others. The contact brings her edges back into focus and suddenly she is whole again. She feels everything all at once, each of her senses sending a barrage of information to her mind, which bounces the signals back with blinding speed.

A moan slips past her lips and she realizes she’d been the one making the sound. At the same time, she becomes aware of her arms and legs moving slightly, and she connects it to the swirling sensation she’d had in the darkness.

Then Erin’s voice is in her ear, slipping over her skin and to her brain, and she feels the physicist’s hand resting in her hair.

The sensations bring Holtzmann back into a fuzzy reality and her eyelids drift open. Her face is extremely close to the floor. She can’t remember how she got there, but the dull pain throughout her body tells her it wasn’t pleasant. She shifts her arms, putting her weight on them to push herself into a sitting position next to Erin.

“Shh, Holtz. It’s okay. I’m here,” Erin murmurs. The other woman’s voice is low, but strained. It sounds like the words come from a distance even though Erin is right beside her.

Holtzmann still feels Erin’s hand in her hair, brushing slowly, but senses the other woman’s body jerking slightly every few seconds. She tries to find words to thank the physicist, but all that comes out when she parts her lips is a high whimper.

She feels Erin’s hand at her leg, and her eyes shift downwards to focus on the movement. Erin’s fingers wrap around the end of the proton gun that’s wedged between her thigh and the floor. She tugs at it, eventually pulling it free and discharging it immediately.

Holtzmann’s eyes follow the stream and she catches sight of the ghost again. Terror rises, sharp in her throat, as her eyes glance over the raging entity. She recognizes it as the same ghost she had brought from New York City, and guilt bubbles up alongside the fear.

Her mind still moves slowly between thoughts, and before she can settle on something else solid enough to stay in her mind, she hears Erin’s voice again.

“Holtzmann,” Erin says her name gently, but keeps her eyes locked on the ghost above them as she speaks. “Holtzmann, I need you do to this one thing for me, okay? Then we’ll get out of here.”

Getting out sounds nice, Holtzmann thinks, and she pushes a soft noise of agreement over her lips. She turns her head towards Erin.

“I need you to hold this for me. Can you do that?” Erin holds one of the proton guns out to her. The blonde glances quickly between the other woman and the ghost. She pushes down the fear, rising like bile in her throat, and reaches for the gun.

Her fingers connect with the cool metal. She slides them around the end of the gun and slips one over the trigger, pushing Erin’s away. The pressure on the trigger falters for a moment before she squeezes it again, boosting the stream around the ghost. The sensation cuts through the last remnants of haze hanging around her brain and the world fully comes crashing down around her.

She doesn’t have time to breathe before a grating scream echoes around the room. Her blood turns to ice in her veins and her breath freezes in her throat with the sound.

Holtzmann screws her eyes shut, resisting the urge to press her hands over her ears. She breathes heavily, long, rough drags of air that tear at her lungs, and she focuses on the gasping sound with each breath.

She feels fingers digging into her shoulder and dragging her upwards.

“Holtz, move!” Erin’s voice commands.

Holtzmann’s eyes snap open and she glances at the ceiling. She focuses on a large, bowl-shaped lamp hanging above them, cracks appearing and growing on its surface. Her eyes widen and she pushes herself up with her free hand, scrambling to her feet and leaning against the wall a few feet from where she’d been sitting.

“Holtzmann, where’s the containment unit?” Erin asks over her shoulder.

Holtzmann raises her eyes to meet Erin’s. “Over there,” she waves towards the front of the room. “It must’ve flown off the table when it got loose. I don’t know what happened, er, but this is all my fault.”

She can feel the guilt and terror in her own voice as she pulls the words from her tight throat. Her mind is already flashing through ideas of what to do next, but Erin speaks first.

“We’ll figure it out. Stay here,” the other woman commands.

Another wave of guilt washes over the engineer as she watches Erin sidestep across the room. Her eyes dart between the ghost, still trapped in both proton streams, and the other woman, still moving quickly but carefully away from her.

Hope springs in Holtzmann’s chest as she watches Erin bend down and wrap her fingers around a small, silver tube. Relief trickles through her body, but her lungs squeeze as a scream of fear rips from Erin’s lips.

The silver box jumped from her fingertips and she lunges for it, fumbling it once before wrapping her fingers securely around it. Holtzmann’s eyes travel up the proton stream that glows from the end of Erin’s arm to the ghost. Its eyes are focused on Erin, and Holtzmann realizes a second too late what’s going to happen next.

Erin’s attention shifts entirely from the ghost, still thrashing above her. It tugs on the stream from Erin’s proton gun, yanking the physicist forward. The butt of the weapon slips from her fingers and clatters over the ground, quickly losing power.

Holtzmann’s heart pounds as the ghost shifts its attention back to her, struggling harder than before against a single stream. She glances quickly down to Erin, seeing the other woman wipe the containment unit clean before hitting a few of the buttons on the outside.

“Holtz! Do you have it?” Erin’s voice is high with fear, but strong.

“I got it, Er, as soon as you have the trap ready!” Holtzmann shouts across the room. She wraps her second hand around the hand on the gun and takes the tip of her tongue between her teeth.

Holtzmann hears Erin roll the trap across the floor and waits for it to bounce to a stop. A beam of light flashes from the top and she guides the ghost towards it. It screams as the trap closes, a dull thud echoing through Holtzmann’s body.

She watches as Erin slips the containment unit into her pocket before someone at the edge of the room screams and she’s surrounded by a press of bodies.

The faces around her blur together as Holtzmann’s eyes swim with overwhelmed tears. A single thought – _Erin_ – claws at her mind. She wants to find the other woman, to thank her, to apologize – and to never let her go again.

The first face to stand out from the others has a warm smile and kind eyes. It’s a man dressed in a blue uniform, with a stethoscope draped around his neck.

She hears him introduce himself, then rattle off a list of questions. Her heartbeat is still thudding in her ears as her eyes scan the crowd, wondering how the room could have filled so quickly. She can’t find Erin, no matter where she looks.

“Ma’am, I need your name, please,” the man asks, stepping back into her line of sight.

“Jillian Holtzmann,” she says with a sigh, crossing her eyes and facing the man.

“What happened to ya here?” He asks as he presses his first two fingers against her wrist.

“A ghost,” she knows that doesn’t answer the question he was asking, but she doesn’t care. Her eyes are scanning the room again.

“Well, that’s okay. Are you experiencing any pain anywhere?” The man drops her wrist and scribbles a number on a clipboard.

“No, I’m fine, really,” Holtzmann insists, turning her eyes back to the man and offering a smile.

“I know, but I’d feel much better if you went to the hospital to get checked out,” he says, his voice gentle but firm, suggesting it was a strong recommendation. “Are you experiencing any dizziness, blurry vision, or fainting spells?”

“I’m not going anywhere, dude,” Holtzmann says, shaking her head and regretting it immediately, suddenly aware of the dull throbbing at the base of her skull.

“That’s against medical advice, Miss Holtzmann,” the man says, his voice cool now. “You should be examined in a better environment than this room.”

Holtzmann rolls her eyes, then casts them over the crowd one last time. They land on Erin, pushing her way through the crowd to where Holtzmann and the medic stand.

“No, I’m not experiencing any dizziness, blurry vision, or fainting spells,” she snaps, swatting the man’s hand away as he tries to shine a light into her eyes.

“Ma’am, please,” the man sighs, his voice brittle with impatience. “Just let me look at your eyes and I’ll sign off and you can go.”

Holtzmann freezes, the promise of her freedom enticing her to cooperate. She follows a small beam of light across the field of her vision and blinks when the man pulls it away. He scribbles something else on his clipboard, then hands it to her.

“This is a document stating you’re acting against medical advice to be examined more thoroughly at a hospital,” he informs her. She takes the clipboard and pen from his hands and hastily scribbles her signature across the bottom of the page, then shoves the clipboard back at him, already pushing through the crowd towards Erin.

 “Holtzmann, oh my god, are you okay? What hap--” Erin’s voice is high, and cracks more than once.

The engineer sees a full range of emotion written in Erin’s eyes as she closes the distance between them, stepping into Erin’s space without stopping. Her arms are wrapped around Erin’s waist before she can think to stop herself.

The hum of the room around them fades out as Holtzmann grips onto the other woman, pressing her face into Erin’s soft shirt. A shiver passes through her body when Erin snakes her arms around Holtzmann’s neck, weaving one hand into her hair. She feels the other woman press a kiss to the top of her head, then rest her cheek there.

Relief the blonde hasn’t felt in months courses through her body, relaxing the events of the past hour out of her tight muscles. She slumps against Erin, suddenly drained, as she feels a sob build deep in her chest.

It slowly rumbles to the surface, bubbling past her chest with a small, strangled cry. She feels a shudder pass through Erin’s and she draws back, an explanation already tumbling past her lips.

“I’m so sorry, Erin. That wasn’t appropriate, but..” her voice fades as she feels the sting of tears in her eyes for the first time that night. Her eyes move to meet Erin’s. “But you saved me.”

She drops her eyes to the ground next to Erin’s feet. Her heart is thudding and her entire body throbs painfully with each beat. She can feel bruises blossoming over her body and her skin feels tight in places where blood has dried over it. Her legs threaten to give out and she leans backwards, against the wall. Her eyes drift shut slowly, pushing two tears down her cheeks.

“Holtzmann,” Erin whispers her name the moment her hands brush over the engineer’s, and she opens her eyes again. “Jillian, I’ll always save you.”

“I thought I lost you. I thought I was going to lose myself,” Holtzmann murmurs quietly. The words are sharp on her tongue as she realizes it’s the first time she’s admitted that out loud, despite having thought it the moment the physicist had left. “And I don’t mean just tonight.”

She meets Erin’s eyes, and the rest of the world falls away again. She tries to express a thousand unsaid words in her stare, and when she opens her mouth to speak again, her voice comes out in a hoarse whisper.

“I’m sorry.”

“I’m sorry too, Jillian,” Erin responds quietly. “For everything. I’m sorry I was scared and I’m sorry I ran out and I’m sorry I was too scared to come back.”

Holtzmann feels tears sting at her eyes again, and she bites her bottom lip to keep a sob from tearing from her throat. She vaguely hears cameras clicking and flashing in the background, and tries to keep a straight face for the camera.

“Can we go back to the room and talk?” Her voice shakes, and she takes a deep breath before continuing, louder. “I don’t want…I want to fix this. I can’t leave this weekend without trying.”

She raises her eyes to meet Erin’s, already feeling the blush creep up her cheeks. She bites her lip nervously as she waits for Erin’s response.

The other woman smiles slowly, then nods. Holtzmann feels a weak smile of relief spread across her own lips as Erin reaches out to squeeze her hand, then turns and cuts through the crowd. The blonde follows her, wincing as a trail of elbows and shoulders pressed against her already-tender skin.

Holtzmann blinks as she steps into the lobby, the lights above bright compared to the steadily-dimming conference room. Her mind wanders as they walk, terrified of what she could be facing by the time they reached the 11th floor. Her heart squeezes painfully with the image of the other woman running out again, and for a moment an excuse for leaving was on her lips.

She’s so lost in her thoughts she doesn’t realize Erin has stopped until the other woman’s fingers wrap around her wrist. She turns to see Erin nod her head towards the stairs.

“Do you mind?” Erin’s voice is soft, and Holtzmann shakes her head, calming at the thought of not having to stand in the crowd.

Her mind continues to wander as they silently climb the stairs, their footsteps bouncing off the cement walls and floors and bouncing back over them. A stitch forms in her side and she breathes deeply, trying to control her racing heart.

The 11th floor hallway is eerily quiet after the cascading echoes in the stairway. The carpet muffles their footsteps. The only sound in Holtzmann’s ears is her own muffled heartbeat until Erin waves a keycard in front of the door and it beeps. Holtzmann focuses on the sound and pulls herself from her own thoughts.

“I’m sorry, Erin, for everything. For then and now,” Holtzmann says over her shoulder as Erin closes the door and flips the lock behind them. She glances briefly into the bathroom, already relaxing at the thought of a hot shower, but flops backwards onto her bed instead. “Ouch, _fuck_.” Everything in her body groans at her sudden movement.

She hears the other bed squeak slightly as Erin sinks down into it, but her eyes stay focused on the ceiling. Her heartbeat slows back to normal as she forces herself to breathe deeply.

“Are you sure you’re okay?” She hears worry in Erin’s voice.

Holtzmann lets her head fall to the side, gazing at Erin above the blankets. “This is definitely not the worst I’ve gotten in a bust, Er. You should know that,” she tries to make her voice light, but it comes out strained.

She watches Erin nod, but sigh. “But it was the first one you had to take _alone_ , Jillian.”

Holtzmann’s stomach clenches at Erin’s use of her first name, but warmth spreads to each of her limbs at the familiarity. She sits up slowly, taking a deep breath.

“I wasn’t alone, though. But I don’t mean just tonight, Er. Please. I need to… _do_ something,” she says, her voice low and shaky. She bends her legs, drawing her knees to her chest and resting her feet on the edge of the bed. She wraps her arms around her knees, hugging them tightly to calm herself.

Holtzmann finds Erin’s eyes and holds her gaze. The apologies and explanations she’d strung together in the staircase were just beyond her grasp, so took a deep breath and let whatever words she could reach trickle past her lips.

 “Erin, I’ve known since the moment I met you that you would be the person to set my world on fire,” she starts, her voice slow and hesitant. “You are what keeps me grounded and safe, but you’re what inspires me to reach for the stars. You’re the order in my chaotic life,” Holtzmann chuckles briefly at the understatement. “And one of the real good things I had, after physics and Rebecca and Abby.”

The admission leaves her breathless, and she waits for Erin’s reply. Her heart races when the other woman whispers her name, but drops when she doesn’t say anything else. Her chest burns as she opens her mouth to continue.

“You came into my life and you…you rearranged me, Erin. You made a space for your being in mine, and that hole has just…it’s just _here_ now,” Holtzmann brings a hand to her heart and feels the way it pounds against her fingertips. “And it’s been empty every single day since you left, and I’ve tried to fill it with so many things, Er, but nothing’s quite like _you_.”

Her heart continues to pound as her voice fades into silence, and her chest shakes with each breath. At some point, her eyes had slipped from Erin’s, and she found herself staring at her hands, clasped in her lap.

“Holtzmann,” Erin says softly. Her voice the most beautiful thing the engineer has ever heard. It slips over her like water, and for a moment, she lets it breathe life back into her soul. “Holtzmann, I’m sorry I was scared and embarrassed and…a self-loathing homophobe,” Erin pauses. Holtzmann glances up to see the other woman’s eyes are closed, but there’s a pained look written across her face.. Her voice is even softer when she continues. “But I was never embarrassed of _you_. I was always so proud to be with such a bright, brilliant, beautiful woman like you.”

The words bounce around Holtzmann’s brain, tumbling and colliding with each other before settling into their proper order. She ran through them again and again once they did.

_I was never embarrassed of you_.

“You…you weren’t?” Her voice is soft and she drops her hands from around her knees, letting her feet fall to the floor. The words still echo through her mind as she rests her elbows on her knees and leans forward.

Erin gingerly reaches across the space between them. Holtzmann watches as her fingertips brush lightly against the back of the engineer’s hands, leaving blazing trails where they touched, before Erin’s fingers wrap around her hands.

“Never,” Erin shakes her head firmly. “I was embarrassed because I was a fully grown woman having a gay panic. I mean, it’s one thing to be into women, it’s another to be _with_ one, and so much had changed since we all became the Ghostbusters that it was just a lot of…” she stares at the place where her finger interlock with Holtzmann’s. “I came out in a lot of ways in a little time. I’m not as good at not caring about what people think of me as I try to be. And being out about myself was just…too much to add.”

Holtzmann processes Erin’s words even as she feels the other woman tense and lean back, pulling her hands from around Holtzmann’s. Her skin misses the warmth of Erin’s touch immediately.

“You didn’t run away because you were embarrassed of me?” Holtzmann speaks slowly,

“I wasn’t embarrassed of you. I was embarrassed of me,” Erin says, frowning slightly. “I know it’s not an excuse and I wouldn’t blame you for not wanting to talk to me again. Especially not because I ran away from our work, too,” Erin’s voice wavers at the mention of leaving the rest of their family.

“Yeah, it was rough at first, I won’t say it wasn’t,” Holtzmann offers with a nervous laugh, remembering the first few days without Erin. The firehouse had been eerily quiet, especially in the space they had shared. Abby had walked around with red eyes and puffy cheeks the first day or two, and Patty’s jokes had been lackluster at best. Those first few busts had been hard, too, until the team learned to move without the fourth limb, even though they never stopped feeling Erin’s absence. “Abby’s brilliant but her strengths are in other things. But…we got through.”

“I’m sorry,” Erin says again. Her head is down and her eyes are planted on the floor but Holtzmann can her frown. “I’m sorry I didn’t come back. But it was hard, because I knew things would never be the same. I knew I couldn’t be around you, and I knew Abby and Patty would want to know why--”

“They always knew, Er,” Holtzmann murmurs quietly, even though she was almost certain Erin already knew it to be true. “They didn’t care. They just wanted us – _you_ – to say it on your own.”

Holtzmann watches a blush creep up Erin’s cheeks. “I know they always knew,” she says, sighing. “But still. I couldn’t face telling them afterwards, especially not after…not after you called it _fucking_. Because it was never just that to me, because I was in love with you. And then you said you didn’t want me anymore and I…I just couldn’t come back.”

Holtzmann feels the look of regret settle over her features as Erin glances up at her, meeting her eyes. The last words she’d spoken to Erin had echoed through her mind countless times since they’d left her mouth, and each time the guilt dug a little deeper. Hearing them from the other woman, though, tears straight through her heart.

“Erin, I was _hurt_ ,” Holtzmann says, her voice thick with tears. “You made me feel the kinds of things that should be shouted from rooftops and written across the skies in letters as tall as a building and I thought I made you feel them too, but you only whispered it. I thought you were ashamed of me.”

She reaches across the space between the beds, taking Erin’s hands in hers before she takes another breath and continues. ““I said everything I shouldn’t have said that night because I didn’t think, because I never think about consequences or what I say or do. It was _never_ just fucking, and Jesus, Er, the last thing I wanted was for you to leave. You’re all I’ve ever wanted.”

Holtzmann feels tears welling up in her eyes again, making the other woman swim in front of her. She blinks them away before moving without thinking about it.

Half a second later, her body is hurtling through the short space between the beds. She straddles Erin’s lap, pushing her down into the bed and leaning over her. Her hands are planted on either side of the other woman’s head.

Erin’s eyes draw her in, holding her gaze there. Holtzmann lets herself get pulled in because nothing else matters more than this. Not the fight, not the bust, not the increasingly painful bruises darkening over most of her body.

Nothing matters except her and Erin, and when she feels the other woman’s arms around her waist, pulling her closer, she gives into the pressure.

She’s close enough to feel the warmth of Erin’s skin. She can easily make out the light smattering of freckles across the other woman’s nose, and see each individual fleck of color that makes up the physicist’s clear blue eyes. She can feel Erin’s heartbeat pounding through her chest and, in that moment, hers beats in answer.

She sees all the answers she’s searched for over the past few months written in the other woman’s eyes, and she just knows. She’s home again.

Holtzmann isn’t sure who moves first, but her eyes close and then her lips are pressed against Erin’s and suddenly she can _breathe_ again.

“Are you okay?” Holtzmann pulls back, whispering the question and fearing the answer.

Her heart soars when Erin nods. The other woman tilts her head up to kiss the corner of Holtzmann’s mouth, then presses one to her cheek.

“Better than I’ve been in months.”

The corners of her mouth twitch up again. A grin breaks across her face, but is quickly distorted by a yawn.

“You’re exhausted, aren’t you?” Erin asks with a giggle that makes Holtzmann’s heart sing.

The engineer nods again, yawning as she moves.

Erin slides out from under her body. Holtzmann’s eyes follow her as she moves to the top of the bed, slipping under the covers before pulling them back and patting the empty space next to her. She shoots Holtzmann a nervous grin, and the blonde can see the hesitation on her face.

“I need to shower, Er,” she says with a shake of her head. Another yawn surfaces and she bites her lip to keep it in. “But give me half an hour and I am _so_ there. Or…maybe I should eat something, actually,” she adds as her stomach rumbles again.

“Why don’t you shower and get dressed then we can go get something to eat?” Erin asks as she tosses the covers back and swings her legs around. She picks clothes from her suitcase and tosses them onto the bed, flashing a smile at the other woman.

Holtzmann smiles and nods, then turns towards the bathroom. She pauses, one handle on the door, and takes a deep breath. Her eyes glance back towards Erin, who has her shirt over her head as she changes.

“And, Erin?”

“Yes?”

“I love you,” her heart skips as she says the words she’d been trying to express all night.

“I love you too, Jillian.”

She smiles widely as she closes the door behind her, happier than she’s been in months.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading! I hope the chapters make sense together, but I'm super sorry if they don't. No one's read these yet but I finished and really wanted to post them!


	12. i don't think that we could work this out

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Something like a flashback as their fight builds up.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This one is kind of maybe a little different, but I hope you like it!

Science is a realm of reactions, where every action has an equal and opposite reaction. Some may be slow to build, while others happen instantaneously.

Something tricky about reactions, though, is the fact that any of them can have their own reactions; each of them is another initial action that sets off more responses.

The first time Holtzmann kisses Erin is both a reaction – to months of flirting, stolen glances, mixed feelings, and mixed drinks about those feelings – but it’s also an action that sets off its own string of reactions, both good and bad.

There’s the pure, unadulterated happiness that Erin experiences for the first time. It’s the kind of happiness she had always associated with being in love, that sets butterflies loose in her stomach and electricity dancing over her skin and puts her in the sickeningly cliché place of not being able to fall asleep because reality was finally better than her dreams.

There’s a new happiness for Holtzmann, too, the kind that comes with finally being someone else’s in a good way, with the knowledge that someone wants every little piece of her; that someone wants her to play a leading role in a love story, not just a background character as an ex or one-night stand.

There’s the limitless kisses shared over blueprints, pages of equations, take-out Chinese boxes and empty Pringles cans, and any and all of Holtzmann’s tools.

There’s the new truths Erin experiences as the other woman makes love to her for the first time, feeling her soul burn to life as she came down from a high she had never known before. They reveal themselves in the tears that slide down her cheeks afterwards and in the gentle swipes of Holtzmann’s thumb across her soft skin to wipe them away.

There’s the beauty that Holtzmann discovers can come with spending night after night with the same woman, because Erin knows just where to touch her and, even less known to Holtzmann, is more concerned with making her feel good than feeling good herself.

There’s the pride that wells in her chest each time she looks at the other woman – her _girlfriend_ – bent over an invention or sketching a plan for something new, because the engineer is such a genius it makes Erin want to push herself even harder to be even better, where any of the other people she’d been with had always wanted to make herself less, dull, small.

There’s the comfort that Holtzmann feels when she catches Erin watching her because, for the first time, someone is watching her not because they _can’t_ understand her but because they _want to_.

But every action has an equal and opposite reaction, and some are bad.

There’s the concern that quickly slips into overprotection, leading the team into trouble.

There’s the always-pondered but never-resolved white elephant in the room, the issue of what exactly they are, because Erin runs her hands over Holtzmann’s skin under the light of the moon but recoils from her touch as they walk under the sun.

There’s the jealousy over men and the jealousy over other women that both women insist shouldn’t be an issue for the other, but is, that they deny feeling themselves, but do.

There’s the small disagreements that turn into big fights, until not being able to pick where to eat for dinner turns into late-night shouting matches across the firehouse, both women saying things that would be better left unsaid.

There’s the way their worlds and lives collide because Erin’s perfect order has no room for Holtzmann’s chaos, and Holtzmann’s precarious instability threatens every day to upend Erin’s flawlessly stable world.

For each way they complement each other, Erin and Holtzmann clash in three other ways. Every move they make, every action they choose, causes an equal and opposite reaction, until they boil over and explode.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As always, thank you so much for reading! I hope you enjoyed this section. If you did or if you didn't, come visit me on Tumblr (anothercaffeinatedlesbian) and let me know why!

**Author's Note:**

> Come visit me on Tumblr (anothercaffeinatedlesbian) to tell me if you hated it! You can also tell me if you enjoyed it and would want to see it continued!


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